The Soviet Gulag System - Part Three - Life in the Gulag

Today, we continue our series about the Soviet Gulag with first-hand accounts of life within the camps. If you'd like to support the podcast with a small monthly donation, click this link - https://www.buzzsprout.com/385372/support

Transcript

Episode 275 – The Soviet Gulag System – Part Three – Life in the Gulag

Last time, we talked about three women who served in or were involved in the Soviet Gulag system. Today, we will talk about what life was like within the forced labor camps. Be prepared for some rather gruesome descriptions and sometimes of hope and frivolity. I will be leaning heavily on first-hand accounts from inmates of the Gulag.

By 1953, there were 476 camp complexes within the Gulag system. Like many of the Nazi concentration camps, there were a number of sub-camps within many of the camp complexes. These sub-units were known as lagpunkts. How many of these existed? We don't really know, as they were never counted. 

The lagpunkts could have a coup of thousand inmates to a few dozen. The conditions would vary based on who the commandant was. It could be pretty tolerable, or it could be horrendous. There was no rhyme or reason behind the conditions. As Soviet actress Tatyana Okunevskaya would write, “Every camp is its own world, a separate city, a separate country.”

In 1937 and 1938, the camps were places where people would go to die due to the Great Purge. Under Lavrentiy Beria, things would change in 1939. It was then that the inmates would be considered economic prisoners. They would be counted on to work for the benefit of the Soviet Union, damned the conditions. The prisoners would be known as zeks. They would be classified by their criminal charges, occupations prior to arrest, and what they could do physically. 

Moscow had sent out rules for the commandants to adhere to to ensure that the newly designated economic prisoners could do as much work as possible. While this was supposed to be the law, there was significant deviance from one camp to another. Corruption by the guards and the administrators was rampant. The prisoners themselves would develop ways to circumnavigate the rules. 

An important area to be aware of was known as the zona or the prison zone. This was either a square or rectangle space where the prisoners could be watched with no place to hide. The buildings within the lagpunkt were almost always the same as well. Their only differences would be signs indicating whether they were a punishment cell, dining hall, or residence hall. Within the camp, near the gate, would be a large open area where the prisoners would be made to line up twice daily to be counted. A fence would surround the area to prevent escape.

Jacques Rossi, a Polish communist who spent several years in the Gulag system, wrote a book, The Gulag Handbook, about the fence surrounding the camps; it "is usually built of wooden posts with one-third of their length in the ground. They range from 2.5 to 6 meters (7.5 to 18 feet) high, depending on local conditions. Seven to fifteen rows of barbed wire are stretched horizontally between the posts, which are about 6 meters (18 feet) apart. Two strands of wire are stretched diagonally between each pair of posts.”

There were differences, as noted by author Anne Applebaum in her book Gulag, “If the camp or colony was located near or within a city, the barbed-wire fence was usually replaced by a wall or fence made of bricks or wood, so that no one approaching the site would be able to see in from the outside.” There would be a guardhouse known as a vakhta near the entrance, where the guards would enter and leave, as well as any free workers coming into the camp. 

In some camps, there were no barriers as they were so far away from anything escape was impossible. They would surround the camp with a strip of land known as no-man's-land, a 5-meter (15 feet) wide killing zone. A sign reading zapretnaya zona would warn the inmates that entering it would permit the guards to shoot to kill. 

One of the surprising positive changes inmates would experience in the Gulag surprised me. It was the openness of the camp. This feeling of relief was due to many of them having spent months in the small cells of many of the Soviet prisons. Olga Adamova-Sliozberg recounted her feelings about her entry into one of the camps and her experience. “The camp population (around a thousand women) seemed to us enormous: so many conversations to have, so many potential friends! Then there was nature. Within the compound, which was fenced with barbed wire, we could walk around freely, gaze at the sky and the faraway hills, go up to the stunted trees, and stroke them with our hands. We breathed the moist sea air, felt the August drizzle on our faces, sat on the damp grass, and let the earth run through our fingers. For four years, we had lived without doing all this and discovered in doing so that it was essential to our being: without it, you ceased to feel like a normal person."

Another perspective comes from Leonid Finkelstein. “You were brought in, you got out of the prison van, and you were surprised by several things. First, that the prisoners are walking around, without guards – they were going somewhere on their duties, whatever. Second, they look completely different from you. The contrast was even greater felt when I was in the camp, and they would deliver new prisoners. The new prisoners all have green faces – green faces because of the lack of fresh air, miserable food, and all that. The prisoners in the camps have more or less normal complexions. You find yourself relatively free, relatively good-looking people.”

It almost sounds like things were pretty good for the inmates in the Gulag, but that is because it was far better than the conditions they encountered in the Soviet prisons. Kazimierz Zarod would put the hopelessness this way, “we were still surrounded by trappings of civilization – outside the walls of the prison there was a large town. …all feelings of normality were suspended. As the days went by I was filled by a sort of panic which slowly turned into desperation. I tried to push the feeling down, back into the depths of consciousness, but slowly is began to dawn upon me that I was caught up in a cynical act of injustice from which there appeared to be no escape.”

Life inside the lagpunkt could be dangerous, not because of the guards, but because of the other inmates, some of whom were career criminals, found guilty of heinous crimes. This was especially true when men and women were held in the same camp. Rape was common in these places, as was murder and torture. Sometimes the guards would protect those most vulnerable; oftentimes, they would laugh and turn away, not caring or not wanting to get involved. Many of the guards felt that they were victims as well. 

Then there were the tedious rezhims, also known as the rules for living. Every day, a controlled regimen began in the mornings with the counting of inmates and the organization of work brigades. As a Soviet scriptwriter for films, Valery Frid would describe, “The brigades would organize themselves in front of the gate. The work-assigner would hold a narrow, smoothly planned signboard: on it would be written the number of brigades, the number of workers. The convoy guard and the work-assigner would check whether everyone was in place, and if they were, they would be taken off to work. If someone were missing, everyone would have to wait while they searched for the shirker."

Kazimierz Zarod writes, “By 3:30 am we were supposed to be in the middle of the square, standing in ranks of five, waiting to be counted. The guards often made mistakes, and then there had to be a second count. On a morning when it was snowing this was a long, cold agonizing process. If the guards were wide awake and concentrating, the count usually took about thirty minutes, but if they miscounted, we could stand for anything up to an hour.”

Sometimes, there was a frivolity to the morning counts at some camps. As Zarod would write, “Each morning, the ‘band’ stood near the gate playing military-style music and we were exhorted to march out ‘strongly and happily’ to our day’s work. Having played until the end of the column had passed through the gate, the musicians abandoned their instruments and, tacking themselves on to the end of the column, joined the workers walking into the forest.”

In the early 1930s, the average workday would last between six and eight hours. This would gradually increase yearly until the late 1930s when it would grow to twelve hours. But that wasn’t the end of the expansion of work hours, as it would become 16 hours in some camps with the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany. This would backfire as the attrition rate due to overwork and illness would force the camp commanders to return to a twelve-hour workday. Some camps didn't care and would create quotas, many of which were almost impossible to complete. 

Applebaum gives us an excellent example of a brutal quota. "One zek, assigned to a brigade, panning gold in Kolyma, had to sift through 150 wheelbarrows a day. Those who had not finished that amount by the end of the workday simply remained until they had – sometimes as late as midnight. Afterward they would go home, eat their soup, and be up at 5 am to start work again."

There were rules set down by Moscow on the number of days off a prisoner was to be given. Still, it wasn’t always followed as the camp commanders were under the gun to produce enough of whatever they were mandated to make based on Stalin's impossible Five-Year Plans. For most inmates, they were to receive one day off a week. Those guilty of more serious political crimes would only receive two days off a month. 

This is how Gustav Herling remembered his stay and how days off were dolled out. “According to regulations, prisoners were entitled to one whole day’s rest every ten day’s work. But in practice, it transpired that even a monthly day off threatened to lower the camp’s production output, and it had therefore become customary to announce ceremoniously the reward of a rest day whenever the camp had surpassed its production plan for one particular quarter… Naturally we had no opportunity to inspect the output figures or the production plan, so that this convention was a fiction which in fact put us entirely at the mercy of the camp authorities.”

It was common to treat horses better than the prisoners. In Dmitlag, a camp commanded by Lazar Kogan, he ever wrote instructions for the use of horses. “The workday of camp horses must not exceed ten hours, not counting the obligatory two-hour break for rest and food. On average, horses must not walk more than 32 kilometers per day. Horses must be allowed a regular rest day, every eighth day, and the rest on that day must be complete." No rules for rest for the people in the camp were ever recorded.

The living conditions for many of the gulag prisoners were extremely bleak. If you were among the unlucky ones to be dumped in a new camp, you had to build it yourself. Ivan Sulimov would recount the following when he was let in Vorkuta in the 1930s. He, along with several other inmates, were dumped "on a flat square of land in the polar tundra." They were then made to erect tents, build a fire, and build a "fence of stone slabs, surrounded by barbed wire" and the barracks, which would house them for the long term.

Applebaum describes the barrack this way, “Moscow dictated their design and as a result, descriptions of them are rather repetitive: prisoner after prisoner describes long, rectangular, wooden buildings, the walls unplastered, the cracks stopped up with mud, the inside space filled with rows and rows of equally poorly made bunk beds. Sometimes there was a crude table, sometimes not. Sometimes there were benches to sit on, sometimes not.”

In some camps, the living conditions were even worse. As A.P. Eystonichev recounted his stay in Karelia, "A zemlyanka – it was a space cleaned of snow, with the upper layer of earth removed. The walls and roof were made of round, rough logs. The whole structure was covered with another layer of earth and snow. The entrance in the dugout was decked out with a canvas door… in one corner stood a barrel of water. In the middle stood a metal stove, complete with a metal pipe leading out through the roof, and a barrel of kerosene.”

As for beds, sometimes there would be bunk beds where two people would sleep on each level. Others weren’t so lucky as they would be forced to sleep on wooden planks or sleep on the dirt floor as some of the newer inmates would do. As for bedding, good luck. As Elinor Lipper would recall, "There was no straw in it and rarely hay because there was not enough hay for the cattle; instead, it contained wood shavings or extra clothes if a prisoner still owned any extra clothes. In addition, there was a woolen blanket and pillowcase which you could stuff with whatever you had, for there were no pillows.”

To make matters worse, there was no sanitation when it came to bathrooms. Most of them would be far from the barracks, which made them difficult to use, especially during the cold winters many of the camps endured. Most of the toilets were made of wood and were outside, with no walls surrounding them. 

Thomas Sgovio would remember the rules surrounding toilet visits; thus, "Outside, in front of each barrack, they stuck a wooden pole and froze it to the ground. Another decree! We were forbidden to urinate anywhere on campgrounds other than the outhouses or on the pole with a white rag tied to the top. Anyone caught violating the decree would be sentenced to ten days in the penal cell… The decree was issued because at night, there were prisoners, unwilling to walk the long distance to the outhouses, urinated instead all over the well-beaten snow paths. The grounds were littered with yellow spots. When the snow melted in late spring, there would be a terrible stench… twice a month we chopped the frozen pyramids and carted the frozen pieces out of the zone.”

Bathing was another problematic situation within the Gulag. Soap was a precious commodity, as there were rules about how much each person could receive. Usually, it would be around 200 grams per month. This amounts to a sliver, and it was to be used to wash your body and your clothes. 

One of the main problems caused by the lack of proper bathing and sanitation was the abundance of lice and bedbugs. Rules set by Moscow demanded that delousing procedures be carried out regularly. Varlam Shalamov complained, "Not only was the delousing absolutely useless, but no lives were also killed by this disinfection chamber. It's only a formality, and the apparatus has been created for the purpose of tormenting the convict still more."

If there were any baths at all, they would be horrific places. Even though a prisoner was dirty and cleaning themselves would seem like a joyful time, it wasn’t. As Thomas Sgovio would describe, “The waiting outside in the frost for those inside to come out – then came the changing room where it was cold – the compulsory disinfections and fumigating process where we tossed our rags in a heap – you never got your own back – the fighting and swearing, ‘you son-of-a-bitch that’s my jacket – selecting the damp, collective underwear filled with lice eggs in the seam – the shaving of hairs on the body by the Camp Barber… then, when it was finally our turn to enter the washing room, we picked up a wooden tub, received a cup of hot water, a cup of cold water, and a small piece of black, evil-smelling soap.” 

Food and the whole dining experience were another horror show. Soup, known as balanda, was served once or twice a day if you were lucky. The description of the types of things put into the balanda is impossible to share as they could be genuinely disgusting. Even the camp commandant at Dmitlag, Lazar Kogan, remarked, "Some cooks act as if they were not preparing Soviet meals, but rather pig slop. Thanks to this attitude, the food they prepare is unsuitable and often tasteless and bland."

While there were supposedly strict guidelines regarding the quantity of food each inmate would receive, it would vary significantly based on availability. When the war was raging, there were times when only a minute amount of food, barely enough to survive on, would be fed to the prisoners. As Vladimir Petrov would put it, "Real famine set in at the mine. Five thousand men did not have a piece of bread."

As you might imagine, nutrient-deficient disorders such as scurvy and pellagra became endemic. The lack of vitamin C, the cause of scurvy, was solved cruelly. The prisoners were forced to drink a brew made of pine needles, which according to reports, was about as foul tasting as you can imagine and likely not worth it. 

Not only was food scarce, but utensils such as spoons and bowls were in short supply. Many people would have to share their bowls with others. As one prisoner said, "If you have your own bowl, you get the first portions – and the fat is all on the top. The others have to wait until your bowl is free. You eat, then give it to another, who gives it to another…"

Theft of food was commonplace throughout the Gulag system. People who were lucky enough to work in places where they had access to food would regularly steal supplies even though the punishment for getting caught was extreme. 

The one constant, though, was the availability of bread. It was sometimes the only food available in the camps. While there was seemingly always bread to be had, the quality was not that good. Many would remember the "black bread" served, which could be as hard as a brick or so small that you needed just two bites to eat it all. 

Vladimir Petrov remembered that while everything could be stolen in order to survive, stealing bread from a fellow inmate was a rule that would rarely be broken. As he would recount, “thieving was permitted, but there was one exception – bread. Bread was sacred and inviolable, regardless of any distinctions in the population of the car.” The penalty for stealing bread was pretty extreme. As Kazimierz Zarod remembered, “If a prisoner stole clothes, tobacco, or almost anything else and was discovered, he could expect a beating from his fellow prisoners, but the unwritten law of the camp – and I have heard it from men from other camps that it was the same everywhere – was that a prisoner caught stealing another’s bread earned a death sentence.”

Dmitri Panin, a close friend of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, wrote about how someone would approach eating bread approached a science in controlling your hunger. "When you get your ration, you have an overwhelming desire to stretch out the pleasure of eating it, cutting your bread evenly into tiny pieces, rolling the crumbs into little balls. From sticks and strings, you improvise a pair of scales and weigh every piece. In such ways, you try to prolong the business of eating by three hours or more. But this is tantamount to suicide!

Never on any account take more than a half-hour to consume your ration. Every bite of bread should be chewed thoroughly to enable the stomach to digest it as easily as possible so that it gives up to one's organism a maximum amount of energy… if you always split your ration and put aside part of it for the evening, you are finished. Eat it all in one sitting; if, on the other hand, you gobble it up too quickly, as famished people often do in normal circumstances, you will also shorten your days…."

Well, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Join me next time when we continue our story about the gulags and the work that was done in them.

So, until next time, Dasvidania eh Spasiba za Vineyamineya.