Smashed in the USSR: Fear, Loathing and Vodka on the Steppes (14 page)

Despite these concessions the Godfather continues to censor our letters. My friends and I start to write to ourselves, posting letters via different channels. We cover the pages with meaningless words, sprinkled with numbers and symbols. Let him waste his time trying to decipher these, we laugh.

Thanks to the barrack stoolies, the Godfather knows the strike was my idea. He has his revenge when VV and I get completely pissed at work. One of our freed companions has thrown a bottle over the fence. Medvedev, the officer in charge of our work brigade, drives us back to the barracks saying we’ll face the music in the morning. When he tries to follow us into the barracks we rush at him, flapping our arms and puffing vodka breath in his face. “Phoo, phoo, phoo, get out, get out.”

Medvedev has not brought an escort, so he leaves, muttering threats. A few minutes later guards come and haul us off to the isolator.

In the morning Medvedev rages at us: “You’ll be punished under article 77 for interfering with an officer in the line of his duty and causing mass disorder.”

This charge is considered worse than murder and punishable
by anything from eight years to execution by firing squad. We refuse to answer questions or admit to anything. “Bring the Godfather. We won’t say anything until he’s present.”

Medvedev laughs in our faces. “I can assure you that he will not come.”

“But he must. He is head of the camp.”

“He won’t.”

On hearing this we begin a hunger strike. A few days later a Black Maria takes us to Kuibyshev jail. We learn that our strike was in vain, because the Godfather was away on holiday that week.

Kuibyshev jail is full of men who have taken part in a riot that makes ours look like a children’s tea party. I hear about it from a prisoner in my cell: “It began when a packet of tea was thrown in. It landed on the strip of ploughed earth between the inner and outer wires. As a prisoner stretched his hand through to recover the tea a guard shot him in the leg. News spread around the zone. When the SVPs got wind of a revolt they ran off to the guard house. A couple of them who didn’t make it were beaten to death.

“We broke into a workshop and found a tank of diesel fuel. We soaked our jackets in the oil, lit them and threw them through the windows of the guards barracks. That set the zone on fire. Some prisoners armed themselves with iron bars and took over the isolators, killing a guard in the process. That day we were possessed by a sort of demonic joy.

“The camp director tried to stop us. I have to admit he was a brave man, for he came out without an escort. He seemed to be prepared to listen so we started to tell him our grievances. Then a zek lost his patience and hurled a waste bin at the director’s
head. Rage took over again and the director was severely beaten. He died later.

“No one touched the nurses in the camp hospital. One of the zeks with authority led them across to the guard room. The cruel thing is, I’ve just heard he got eight years. They said that if he had the authority to protect the women he might have intervened to end the riot.

“Troop carriers surrounded the zone and a helicopter circled overhead. A voice shouted over loudspeakers: ‘Citizen prisoners! Cease this mass disorder immediately!’ We began to wonder why the soldiers didn’t storm the place to restore order. It seems they were waiting for orders from Moscow.

“When the day ended we realised we had nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. We threw stones at anyone who tried to enter the zone, but the night was cold and by the next morning we’d lost our enthusiasm. They came for us in Black Marias and we no longer had the energy to defend ourselves.

“We were sent to different jails. They took me to Syzran, where I opened my big mouth. Some bastard of an SVP overheard me and here I am, looking at another five years. I didn’t even kill anyone or beat the guards. What a mess. If I hadn’t got mixed up in that business I’d have been out next year.”

This man’s story depresses me, for I too am looking at a longer sentence, and this time it will be in a camp rather than a ‘treatment centre.’

Fortunately for us, Medvedev can’t produce a witness at our trial. When we threw him out of the barrack there was only one other man present and he was in a state of Antabuse-induced psychosis, cowering in a corner pointing a piece of plywood at
Medvedev and shouting: “Bang! Bang!” Our charge is reduced to hooliganism. Even so, we get four years each.

Four years! I torment myself imagining this endless length of time. But my cellmates congratulate me. Well done! That’s nothing! It’s true that many people get longer sentences for lesser crimes but I fear I’ll go out of my mind.

Then the impossible happens. Our sentences are overturned thanks to VV’s mother. As director of a Syzran department store, she is an important person and able to hire a good lawyer who wins our case at the court of appeal. The judge simply orders us to serve out the rest of our original sentences – a year in my case – in a different prison. VV and I are moved to Barkovka near Toliatti.

The camp at Barkovka is strict regime, full of SVPs and headed by a bastard called Dubov. It lies near an industrial dump which burns continually, shrouding the area in black smog.

The industrial zone is a brick-making plant separated from the living area by a high fence with gates and watch-towers. The factory works around the clock, one brigade taking the heavy wet bricks from wagons and loading them into the kilns, the other pulling the scorching bricks out. They give us gloves once a week, which wear out before a single shift is over. Zeks wind old cloths around their hands but these do not prevent serious burns. Barely a week passes without a zek inflicting an injury on himself to get out of work.

My crippled leg saves me from the kilns. I am sent instead to make fluorescent lamps in a separate workshop. There I make friends with a man who deliberately broke his arm to get away from the kilns. Sanka Mirzaev is a Tatar from Chapaevsk. My wife attended his mother during her numerous pregnancies.

Sanka has had a series of different ‘fathers’ and eventually ended up in a children’s prison where he became very fastidious. He never picks up bread or dog ends from the ground, he will not share a table with a loud or messy eater, and he makes his bed as neatly as a soldier. When his arm starts to heal they threaten to send him back to work in the kilns. Workers who break their arms usually only get a couple of months off. Sanka has plenty of peasant cunning and manages to outwit them by writing a letter to a friend, detailing escape plans. He tries to pass it out via a zek suspected of being a stoolie. The plan works like magic and the letter falls into the Godfather’s hands. Sanka is categorised as a potential escapee and banned from the work zone.

Another lad who works with us is so stunted he could pass for a twelve-year-old child. His prison jacket reaches to his toes. “That’s our Pakhan,”
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says Sanka. “Poor little sod. I knew him back in children’s camp. His mother was a prostitute. He’s never known home-cooking or sweet pies, but he’s been sucking on vodka since he was a toddler. His mother used to send him out in the mornings to pick up dog-ends from the streets. Then he had to fend for himself while she entertained her clients. He survived by snatching bread from people’s hands, running off and eating it in entranceways. After his mother died of TB, Pakhan took to the streets. He was soon arrested for theft and sent to a children’s prison. I got to know him there. I felt sorry for him as he was always being beaten up. Once they stuffed him in a locker and threw him out of a first floor window. Now he’s blind in one eye and he can’t hear much. One day he stabbed one of his bullies to death. He got six years.”

Instead of becoming feral and cruel as a result of his treatment, Pakhan is withdrawn. He reacts to simple acts of kindness with suspicion. Once I have met my quota I help him finish his and then we get down to the important business of preparing ‘Boris Fyodorovich’ from industrial ‘BF’ glue. Pakhan sticks close by my side; unlike the others I don’t tease him.

“Pakhan, over here,” I call, adding water to the glue and pouring it through a filter. On some days I collect as much as two litres of spirits. It’s risky to store the alcohol so we drink it straight away. There are more than enough volunteers. When he has drunk his fill of BF, Pakhan hides under the workbench and goes to sleep wrapped in his jacket.

When Pakhan nears his release date a Toliatti factory sends someone to offer him a job. The emissary is a young Komsomol girl who brings some clothes – several sizes too large for him. He stands sullenly before her looking like a mediaeval courtier in his enormous jacket, the lining bulging through rips. Politely the girl asks: “Are you thinking of taking a correspondence course when you get out of here?”

Too deaf to hear her question, Pakhan cowers in a corner: “It wasn’t me! I didn’t fucking do it!”

Pakhan is reluctant to leave our company. On the day he is due for release he runs off and hides. We eventually find him huddled under a workshop bench, his thin childish hand gripping a jar of BF. Pakhan looks up at me and smiles his toothless grin: “Ivan, wouldn’t it be fucking wonderful if we could feel like this all the time?”

Everyone leaving camp plans to find a good job, marry, get ahead, and of course, never end up inside again. I don’t suffer from these illusions, but nevertheless I worry about what I’ll do after my release. I have nowhere to live in Chapaevsk and my former plant is refusing to take me back. To apply anywhere else with a passport like mine
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is not a cheerful prospect. Some of the lads who are up for release ask me to come and live with them, but it’s clear how that will end up. I dream of a life as a
lighthouse-keeper
or a watchman at an observatory. I want to go somewhere far away from so-called civilization, deep in the taiga where there are no Party organizations or vodka shops. Remembering how peaceful I felt in the forest looking after Yura’s bees I decide to seek out a similar kind of existence, far away from Chapaevsk.

“I’m never going back to work,” I announce to Sanka and VV. “I’ve inhaled enough chlorine and buried too many workmates. It’s a pointless life. Everyone says they’ll do their ten years
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and
then get out, but by then another kid has arrived or they need money to buy a TV set. I’m not going down that road. I’m sick of being told how to live.”

“And how exactly are you going to make your protest? As soon as you open your mouth you’ll go straight back inside,” VV points out.

“Well, if I don’t protest openly at least I won’t lift a finger to help the system. Anyway, it’ll only be a matter of time before I start to drink again and that’ll lead me straight back to the LTP. I’m going south to pick up casual work. In the countryside I’ll be free to do more or less as I like. Country people stick more closely to the old ways.”

VV turns to Sanka: “So Vanya is going to become a Wanderer.
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Perhaps you think our beloved Comrade Brezhnev is the Antichrist?”

“The very same.”

“And our Founder and Teacher, Comrade Lenin?”

“The Father of Lies,”

“The Communist Party of the USSR?”

“The vessel of Satan.”

“And all who submit to its authority?”

“Devil’s spawn!”

“But this is not the nineteenth century,” VV points out. “Our Russian people don’t support vagabonds and holy fools with the generosity of bygone years. How are you going to live?”

“I’ll register with a collective farm. No one expects you to work there. The farm will give me a bed and food and my time will be my own. Whenever I get sick of it I can take to the road,
if the police pick me up my papers will say I’m a collective farm worker. Vassya-Honeycake told me there are plenty of farms in the Kuban eager to take people on.”

VV bursts out laughing: “All over the USSR peasants are busting a gut trying to leave the farm. You only find old women, drunks and mental defectives there now, and you want to run away
to
a collective farm!”

“There’s nothing left for me here. I no longer have a family. These days I’m responsible to no one.”

“But you can’t run away from yourself,” says VV.

“I’m not trying to. All I want to do is get away from everyone who knows me. Especially my mother.”

I have sworn never to return home to my parents. While I was inside I learned that my younger brother Sashka died after drinking tainted samogon on New Year’s Eve. He came home and fell into a coma in front of my mother and stepfather who were both too drunk to notice their son’s condition. By the time they sobered up it was too late to call an ambulance. Perhaps no hospital could have saved him; all the same I blame my parents for Sashka’s death.

VV and I are released together. We got on well in jail but on the outside our differences begin to show. No doubt his important mother will find him some easy work – and no doubt he’ll soon start taking pills again. Still, he lends me money for a ticket to Sochi.

Before I leave Toliatti I go back to Barkovka to meet Sanka on his release day. I know no one else will come for him so I bring a coat and some clothing to spare him the shame of going home in a prison jacket. Sanka’s family live not far from the hostel where I’m staying. He invites me up to meet them.

A heavily pregnant woman opens the door. Fat rolls from her neck to her knees. She squints hard at us for a minute and then throws her arms around Sanka: “Tolik! You’re home. Oi! Grish… get a bottle, our lad’s back.”

Inside the flat youths and girls in various states of drunkenness are draped over chairs and boxes. A few of them turn indifferently to stare at us. Sanka’s Heroine Mother waddles up to a comatose man and punches her huge fist into his ear. “Grish, I said wake up you prick-for-legs. Our Misha’s back. Give him a drink.”

I fear that Sanka will not enjoy the taste of freedom for long.

I take a train to Sochi and spend a few weeks wandering along the Black Sea coast, picking up odd jobs. I fall in with other tramps who help me to find places to sleep. We prefer the warmth and companionship of railway stations but the police come round continually waking us up. Sometimes we sleep on stationary trains in sidings but local youths barge through the carriages, taking money off those too drunk to resist.

An older tramp shows me how to make some money by standing in the ticket queue for the Sochi hydrofoil and selling my place to latecomers. This man thinks I’m really wet behind the ears, although I’ve been a Decembrist and a zek. “How can you reach the age of 35 and not know what a spets
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is? They have them in all big cities and railway stations. If you get picked up without documents they throw you in for 30 days while they cook up something really incriminating against you. Three times in the spets earns you a year in camp.”

I nearly fall victim to this law in the town of Tuapse. A policeman scrutinizes my passport, decides he doesn’t like my
face and tears up my document under my nose. Then he arrests me for travelling without a passport. At the police station I try to explain what their colleague has done. They laugh and slap my face a few times. Fortunately they are too lazy to do the necessary paperwork to give me 30 days. Probably they’ve exceeded their quota of tramps in jail that month.

I have 24 hours to leave town. From Tuapse I board the steamer
Admiral Nakhimov
and sit in the buffet completely indifferent to whether it is taking me north or south. It docks at Novorossisk where I earn a few roubles by carrying boxes of flowers from the pier to taxis. Having money in my pocket at the beginning of the day buys me a breakfast of beer fortified with essence of dandelion. At night I sleep among the feet of giant sailors hurling grenades and charging fascists with bayonets. It might be a Hero City, but its monuments are very draughty.

The town of Novorossisk is the most important oil terminus in the USSR. Vessels from all over the world dock here. I stick to the local port as I know the foreign quays are crawling with plain-clothes police.

A young lad approaches me at a beer-stall, saying he has some business to discuss. Something about him makes me suspicious. Before I have a chance to walk away a police car pulls up and takes me to the spets. My appearance must have given me away.

The spets is a row of cells in the courtyard of the town police station. Eight to ten men are crammed into each stuffy cell. We spend our days playing draughts with bread counters and brewing chefir. A skilled chefirist needs only four sheets of newspaper to kindle a fire that will brew a litre. We have to keep the smoke to a minimum in order not to give ourselves away.

Amongst the guards are a pair of Adyghe twins who are much
more humane than the rest. They give me some cardboard with which I make chess pieces. One of them suggests a game but he plays badly and I win with ease. One of my cell-mates whispers: “Idiot – maybe you should try to lose.”

And so I do. It puts the Adyghe in such a good mood he later throws two loaves of bread into the cell. The next day he gives me a mugful of samogon.

That afternoon my chess game is interrupted by shrieks from the courtyard. I stick my head out of the ventilation hole in our cell door and see the police bringing in five girls. One of them, a tall girl with a shaven head, is wriggling between the Adyghe twins and trying to pinch their cheeks. They duck their heads in embarrassment. A camera stands ready in the yard. The bald girl saunters over and stands in front of it, striking exaggeratedly glamorous poses. “Hey, you bastards, get a fucking move on, it’s cold out here!”

“Come on, Vera, stop pissing about,” says the police photographer.

“And what are you staring at?” she catches sight of me.

I pull my head back into the cell as my mates laugh. It hurts me to hear obscenities fall from the lips of such a young and pretty girl.

The girls have been arrested for picking up foreign sailors. The police threaten to tell their workplaces and schools of their ‘crimes.’ Those who show fear are blackmailed by the police for sexual favours; those who can’t produce documents are put in the women’s cell next to ours. It is never empty.

We shout over to each other and pass food and cigarettes across by bribing the guards. Usually the girls have more to give than us poor tramps.

From time to time a fight blows up in the girls’ cell. They need to relieve their tension somehow. Vera can’t exist for one minute without trying to start a fight. Perhaps having her head shaved has traumatised her. They say it is to get rid of lice, but really it’s because it is harder for bald girls to work. Clients are suspicious of their state of health.

I savour my daily exercise in the courtyard, it restores my spirits to look at the sky, hear the noises of the town and feel the rain on my face. One day an elderly man falls into step beside me. He introduces himself as Uncle Misha the Railwayman.

“It’s my first time in the spets. It was my own bloody fault for getting drunk and going to the end of the line. In all my 60 years I’ve never made that mistake. They defrocked me – took away my cap and hammer.”

Uncle Misha is a robber who works the railway lines. “I began my career in the 1920s. I was an orphan - my parents died in the civil war. I soon learned that stations are the best places for stealing. People are tightly packed together and they don’t know their surroundings. I got caught a few times but no one handed me in. People would rather beat me up themselves and leave the authorities out of it. I guess they had their reasons.

“Then I learned how to rob goods wagons. I climbed onto their roofs and let myself down inside. I’d pick what I wanted, jump off the train and sell my haul to a fence. The only tricky parts were keeping an eye out for the guards and jumping off the moving trains. You have to be fit for that.” He glances at my leg.

“When I got older I found a job on the railways. It didn’t last long, but I kept my cap and hammer, the tools of my trade. Since then trains have been my home. I know every station in the USSR. Even the smallest country halt. When I get off at a
station the first thing I do is study the timetable. I learn them by heart, both summer and winter versions. They’re my daily bread.”

I laugh. “You remind me of George Peters, a man I read about in a book. He avoided the police thanks to his excellent knowledge of train times.”

Uncle Misha opens his toothless mouth in disbelief: “Did you really read that?”

“Yes, it’s in a book by an American writer, O. Henry.”

Uncle Misha whistles: “Whew! I never thought you could learn a thing from books. Everything in them I already shat out the day before yesterday!”

He takes a surreptitious puff on a roll-up cupped in this hand. “Sometimes I notice a lonely-looking suitcase. Then I wait for everyone to fall asleep. But it drives me mad when some bloody intellectual takes out a book and reads. You can’t tear him away. It’s like trying to snatch a baby from its bottle. But it also works the other way. A man might bury himself in the book so deep you could stuff him up the arse and he’d never notice. So there’s a use for books all the same.

“When everyone’s asleep I get down to business. I grab the case, jump off the train, hide alongside it and wait for the next express. Two or three minutes before it leaves I push the suitcase into an axle-box with my long hammer and then climb inside a carriage. I sit in an empty place, wearing my railway cap so the conductor won’t ask to see my ticket.

“When he’s passed by I start to tell the other passengers stories that I’ve picked up on my travels. They’re always willing to share their food in return for the entertainment. When I’ve eaten my fill and slept a bit I get out at a suitable stop.

“In any new town the first thing I do is memorise the
timetable. Then I go to the nearest beer shop for a few drinks. After that I collect empty vodka bottles - only the cleanest ones, mind. I take them out somewhere quiet on the edge of town and fill them with water. I use my bootlaces to close the caps. Then I wait till evening and go back to the station. I wander along the platform with a bottle in my hand and almost always get lucky. My bottle reminds passengers they’re thirsty so they call out: ‘Oi, mate! Where can I get one?’

“‘Not far from here, not far at all. About half a kilometre,’ I tell them.

“The shop might as well be on the moon. The greedy wretches beg me to sell the bottle. I hum and haw until the train is about to depart and then I give in. They even want to tip me. ‘No, no, you’re all right,’ I say to them. As soon as their train starts I hop on one going in the opposite direction.”

I lie awake listening to Uncle Misha snoring beside me. He revolts me. I wonder how he can take advantage of people’s trust and their simple desire to drink. I think about it for a long time before concluding that his crimes are nothing new. People deceived others like that even before the revolution.

The June dawn breaks at 4am. I awake to find I’ve run out of matches so I go to get a light from the joggers who are already pounding the sand. To my annoyance everyone turns out to be a non-smoker. Damn sportsmen.

I notice an ugly, squint-eyed fellow studying me.