Hammer and Sickle, Part II by Andrew McLarney

Pyotr shared his last cigarette with me today which we sneaked off to smoke behind the latrines.

Our supervisor, Kryshenkov, is a ruthless man. Today he ordered a man shot dead simply for stretching his back. To question the actions of the superiors means death for you too. We all know that prisoners are cheap and easily replaceable. The guards are not shy of reminding us. Perhaps it would be right to document the many incidents of barbarous cruelty they inflict upon us? The carelessness with which we are beaten and murdered. Alas, the nation’s dream of equality for all is achieved, we are all equally starving, equally weak and equally hopeless. Sometimes I am jealous of those that have escaped via the permanent ‘solution’. At least their suffering is over. Kryshenkov says that tomorrow we are going to be salvaging the wreckage of a downed DI-4, which crash-landed a fortnight ago some way out over the marshes. They say it won’t ever be operational again, but we will collect the parts and bring them back anyway.

They sent six thousand of us in total. Only three hundred returned. I am beginning to suspect that the entire operation was a kind of conspiracy to get rid of and make way for new prisoners. Or perhaps the wreckage really was put to good use in the war effort? It didn’t seem like it to me. Much of the metal had rusted or was broken into such contortions that recovering it for use would require it to be smelted at the very least. Perhaps there is another workforce assigned to that task.

Pyotr was hanged this morning, along with fifty others, in the commune yard. It turns out he was one of the suspects in the plot to overrun the barracks. It is best not to make friends. At least not with people whom you are unwilling to lose. I suppose the escape is off, then.

Today Kryshenkov informed me that I was being transferred to a different camp. I welcomed it, initially. Surely nothing could be worse than twenty-two men in a ten-foot cell? But then came the news that I was headed for Solovki. Even we at Kolyma had heard of old, cold Solovki - of how they took you to the bell tower of the old monastery and shot you through the back of the head and kicked your corpse down a hole if you were remotely disobedient.

Solovki: a place once thought by the ancients to be the very gateway to the ‘otherworld’. A portal of islands at the Northern-most recesses of our great and solid Union. Their stone monoliths and burial mounds can still be seen littering the shores. The Orthodox Church built a splendid monastery on one of the islands during the reign of Vasily II which still stands (though not so proudly, anymore) today. This structure has been renovated to serve a most fantastic purpose for the Party: a camp! Such is the reach of their ingenuity when it comes to all matters pertaining to the removal of ‘undesirable’ citizens. Well, Solovki is about as far as you can get from a taste of Freedom. And it is Solovki for which I am destined tomorrow morning.   

A school bus came to take us, those of us headed for Solovki, for inferno – the malebolge. Can you picture that? A troop of grown men, packed and loaded and carted across the Styx on a school bus. I have never known a silence quite like the one that befell us all on that bus journey - the gaunt, grey faces of the men staring bleakly out of the window. The bus apparently passed through St Petersburg at one point, but I had been asleep and missed it. The others told me it was a very beautiful city.

Sleep. Now that is the most ingenious of their tortures: the deprivation of sleep. Not only is a prisoner more suggestible and less resistant when deprived of sleep, but he is also viable to fall short of his daily work quota. In this the guards take a near satanic delight, as it gives them an excuse to practise their aim on human targets. How they laugh at us, calling us ‘fascists’ as they kick their steel-cap boots into the perineal nerve at the side of the knee. Sleep – yes. You must get it while you can.

Our arrival on Solovki was delayed on account of the fact that our boat across the channel was hindered by a storm. During this time, I contracted some kind of illness which led to coughing and a weakness of the bladder. Nobody paid any attention to my deteriorating condition and I was eventually dragged aboard in my sodden cot and told: “You fucking reek of shite, you dirty zek.” Others have suffered worse indignities.

I met eyes with a woman today, a nurse. A beautiful, angelic woman, just for a moment. It felt like all the air had been pumped out from my brain and it took me a second before my knees regained some stability. I think it is safe to say that I am most definitely, categorically, deeply and inarguably in love. I hope I see her again, maybe even learn of her name. Oh, the thought of it! Maybe we will marry and raise two handsome children named Anya and Alyosha, with a pet cat named Pushkin. We might inhabit a nice, furbished apartment overlooking the Fontanka in St Petersburg, or in a country house on the hillside out by Kinerma. There is hope after all. I will learn your name. I will learn it and I will take it with me to Freedom!

Words by Andrew McLarney