"We wanted to act, to live": Eight fates of Kolyma political prisoners
October 30th is the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression in Russia. The date was chosen to commemorate the hunger strike of camp prisoners against their inhumane treatment, which began on October 30th, 1974, in Mordovia. Kolyma—the "pole of cruelty of the Gulag," as Solzhenitsyn put it—is known for the prisoners who served their sentences there. "NeMoskva" recalls several names and stories—from among the millions of people caught in the wheel of repression from Stalin to Andropov. Some names are familiar, while others you may hear for the first time.
Reading this text, one can see how much today's Russian authorities have borrowed from the Soviet repressive machine. For example, reading about the torture and broken jaw of aircraft designer Sergei Korolev, one is reminded of the story of engineer Valery Pshenichny, who died after "investigative actions" in 2018. And the two consecutive prison terms of historian Andrei Amalrik, who was re-imprisoned after serving his sentence based on the testimony of other prisoners, is a carbon copy of the new sentence of blogger Vladislav Sinitsa.
You can find many more allusions and coincidences in the text, where the history of the Soviet Union echoes the history of the new Russia, in which the idea of the insignificance of human life in front of the system is still alive.
- Writer Varlam Shalamov: "My memory aches like a frostbitten hand."
- Prince Dmitry Svyatopolk-Mirsky: "Stalin's Constitution is a lie"
- Writer Evgenia Ginzburg: "There is only one hell"
- Poet Mikhail Drai-Khmara: "I've lost a lot of weight."
- Student Elena Glinka: "Dead women were dragged by their feet to the door."
- Aircraft designer Sergei Korolev: "They'll kill him without an obituary."
- Historian Andrei Amalrik: "...and many will be intimidated"
- Philologist Konstantin Azadovsky: "It was a happy day when I was freed."
Writer Varlam Shalamov: "My memory aches like a frostbitten hand."
The son of a Vologda priest, Varlam Shalamov (1907–1982) received his first prison term in 1929. While studying law at Moscow University in the mid-1920s, he became involved with a group of opposition-minded students who criticized Stalin's policy of one-man rule. "We wanted more than just to read poetry. We wanted to act, to live," he recalled.
The manifesto of the “left opposition” at that time was the unpublished “testament of Lenin” – his letter to the XII Congress VKP (b) with characteristics of the alleged party leaders and a special emphasis on Stalin's negative traits. The document was printed in an underground student printing house, where a raid OGPU and Shalamov got there.
I consider this day and hour the beginning of my public life—the first true test under harsh conditions. I was about to test my true spiritual qualities. (source)
Arrest of Shalamov served In solitary confinement in Butyrka prison, he refused to testify during the investigation. For "anti-Soviet agitation," the future writer received three years in a special concentration camp. He was marched on foot for a month to Vishera in the Perm region.
At its dawn, the GULAG had not yet assumed the form of extreme cruelty; the regime in the Vishera camp (prisoners were building a pulp mill) could be considered "lightened".
The clothes were their own, free, and only as they wore out were the prisoners given government-issued ones - trousers of soldier's cloth, pea coats of soldier's cloth, ushankas with earflaps made of soldier's cloth.
They fed people in a special way back then. No one had yet thought of turning rations into a means of extorting quotas. Everyone received the same state ration, the prisoner's ration. Everyone was entitled to eight hundred grams of bread, welds.
"They didn't pay anything for their work. But monthly lists for "bonuses" were compiled at the discretion of the bosses, and from these lists they awarded two, three, or rarely five rubles a month."
(source)
After completing his sentence, Shalamov returned to Moscow, where he found work as a contributor to the magazine "For Shock Work" and later married Galina Gudz. Shalamov met her through stories relatives, back in the Vishera camp, where Galina came to meet her young husband, and the future writer “stealed” her away, agreeing to meet immediately after liberation.
The couple lived in her parents' five-room apartment: Galina's father, Ignatius, was a high-ranking official in the People's Commissariat of Education, and her brother, Boris, was a long-time employee of the NKVD's foreign department, engaged in espionage abroad.
Moscow in the 30s was a terrifying city. The underground of the 20s, so vibrant, had retreated into hiding, swept from the face of the earth by the iron broom of the state. Endless lines at the stores, coupons and cards, gloomy streets, a store on Tverskaya Street where there was no line. I went in: empty shelves, but in the corner sat a dirty, hundred-bucket barrel. Someone was scooping something out of the barrel, arguing about something: "Soap for everyone." (source)
In July 1936, Galina Gudz's older sister, Alexandra, was unexpectedly fired from her job. A personal diary containing the names of "enemies of the people" she had failed to report was found at her workplace. Upon learning of the new family member's "tainted" record, Boris Gudz pressured Shalamov, who wrote a letter to the NKVD officially renouncing his former Trotskyism. Varlam had a trusting relationship with Alexandra—Asya, as her family called her—and showed the letter to her before sending it. She was surprised by this move and tried to dissuade her from "self-incriminating," but was unable to resist her brother and sister. Asya will be arrested At the end of 1936, he received eight years in prison, which was later replaced by the Kolyma camps, and died in 1944 in the Elgen camp.
Thus, Shalamov came to the attention of the Lubyanka, was arrested on January 12, 1937, and sent to the same Butyrka prison. He later recalled that he was investigated in the first half of 37, "when torture had not yet been used," adding, "I don't know how I would have held up if they had beaten me." The result was a five-year sentence for "Trotskyist activities," with the investigators' primary "evidence" drawn from the first case.
Shalamov arrived in Magadan in August 1937, during the peak years of the "Great Terror," which intensified the camp regime to its extreme. The new head of Dalstroi, Karp Pavlov, instituted a 14-hour workday, and executions became routine—a "maximum quota" for Kolyma was set at 10,000 people (unfulfilled, around 8,000 were killed in 1937-38).
Saying out loud that the work is hard is enough to get you shot. Any innocent remark about Stalin is enough to get you shot. Remaining silent when people shout "Hurray!" for Stalin is also enough to get you shot. Silence is propaganda, that's been known for a long time. (source)
General labor for the entire camp period meant certain death; conditions in the climate of the Far North were extremely difficult.
The most terrible and merciless thing, perhaps, was the cold. After all, activated Only frost above 55 degrees. This 56 degree Celsius was caught, which was determined by the spit freezing in mid-air.
Hunger is the second force that destroys me in a short period of time, like two weeks, no more.
The third force is the lack of force. We're not allowed to sleep; I'm crawling around the face, hammering in stakes, picking with frostbitten hands, with no hope of doing anything. 14 hours, plus two hours for breakfast, two hours for lunch, and two hours for dinner.
How much sleep is left—four hours? I sleep, I find a place to stay, and then I fall asleep.
Beatings are the fourth force. Everyone beats a weakling: the guard, the work orderly, the foreman, the gangsters, the company commander, and even the barber considers it his duty to give him a slap.
(source)
During his time in the camps, Shalamov was on the brink of death from exhaustion and illness more than once, but was miraculously saved: in December 1938, he was taken to Magadan to be charged with a new crime, but this coincided with a change of power in the NKVD (Beria replaced Yezhov), and the trial never took place.
In 1942, after serving a five-year sentence, Shalamov was not released—releases from the camps were cancelled during the war "until further notice." And already in 1943, a new case was opened against him. According to the indictment, the writer allegedly "expressed dissatisfaction with the policies of the Communist Party, while simultaneously praising Trotsky's counterrevolutionary platform and slandering the Stakhanovite movement." One of the charges, as Shalamov himself mentioned, was his statement that Ivan Bunin was a talented writer.
For yet another instance of "anti-Soviet agitation," he received a ten-year sentence. This time, he was sent on a relatively lenient "vitamin assignment"—a small camp in the taiga with unescorted work. But his failing health took its toll. Diagnosed with "severe physical exhaustion," weighing 48 kilograms, the writer was taken to the hospital in the village of Belichya, which proved his salvation.
Thanks to the intercession of the hospital's head physician, Nina Savoeva, he was first employed as an orderly, and then completed a paramedic course, avoiding hard labor for the remainder of his sentence.
Shalamov was released early at the end of 1951 after completing his "credits," and returned to Moscow two years later. In 1954, he began writing the "Kolyma Tales" cycle, as well as poems under the general title "Kolyma Notebook."
He talks about his works and his past in the camps. писал as follows:
These psychological changes are irreversible, like frostbite. Memory aches like a frostbitten hand at the first cold wind. No one who returns from imprisonment can live a single day without remembering the camp, the humiliating and horrific labor there.
Author of "KR" He considers camp a negative experience for a person—from the first to the last hour. A person shouldn't know about it, shouldn't even hear about it. No one becomes better or stronger after camp. Camp is a negative experience, a negative school, a corruption for everyone—for the authorities and prisoners, guards and spectators, passersby and readers of fiction.
In the late 50s, Shalamov was granted disability status for Ménière's disease, a vestibular disorder exacerbated by the camps. Some doctors suspected he had an autoimmune disorder of the nervous system. From then on, the writer suffered from dizziness and insomnia, and towards the end of his life, he began to go deaf.
During the Soviet era, Shalamov published only a few poetry collections, mutilated by censorship—without the "Kolyma" poems. The "Kolyma Tales" were published in Russian-language journals abroad beginning in the late 60s. They were published legally in the USSR for the first time. printed only in 1988.
In May 1979, the seriously ill Shalamov was transferred to the Literary Fund's nursing home for the elderly and disabled, where he spent the last three years of his life. He was buried at Kuntsevo Cemetery.
It was January, very cold, and the church seemed chilly. I don't recall any political incidents—except that the funeral bus driver had a portrait of Stalin on his windshield, and we all shuddered a little. (memory (about the funeral service for Shalamov's friend, doctor Elena Zakharova)
Sources: V. Esipov, "Shalamov", M., 2012; V. Shalamov "Autobiography", "Vishera", "How it began", "About prose".
Prince Dmitry Svyatopolk-Mirsky: "Stalin's Constitution is a lie"
According to family legend, the Svyatopolk-Mirsky family traces its roots back to the Rurik dynasty; they received nobility under Alexander I and were elevated to the princely class under Alexander II.
Dmitry Mirsky (1890–1939) was the son of Nicholas II's Minister of the Interior. From childhood, he was fascinated by poetry, wrote his own verse, and enrolled in the Philology Department of St. Petersburg University. He fought in World War I, then joined the White movement, and emigrated via Poland and Greece to London, where he began teaching literature.
In the 1920s, he published two fundamental works on the history of Russian literature in English. They went through numerous editions, and in the 1960s, they were translated into major European languages. The prince-philologist also published the literary journal "Versty," featuring Soviet and émigré writers.
In 1931, Mirsky published an article titled "Why I Became a Marxist" in the British workers' newspaper Daily Worker and reprinted it in the Parisian Nouvelle Revue Franchise under the title "The Story of a Liberation." The article was devoted to a complete reassessment of Mirsky's values, and his "liberation" consisted of "throwing off the shackles" of an idealistic worldview and embracing a materialistic approach. That same year, the prince joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, and in 1932, he returned to the USSR.
How to note According to researchers, Mirsky was by then a convinced and sincere Marxist—though more of the Western rather than the Soviet persuasion. However, after several years of living in the USSR, the prince's views on the "Soviet experiment" became skeptical.
How to remembered Vera Guchkova, the daughter of a famous deputy of the pre-revolutionary State Duma, listened to Stalin's speech about the constitution on the radio with Mirsky in 1936, and she herself was "in admiration."
Dim, his face twisted with hatred, muttered, "You don't understand anything. It's all a lie." He didn't say anything more, and I, a communist by then, noted this as an expression of his general disillusionment with the Soviet Union.
In the spring of 1937, Mirsky joined the NKVD denunciation, accusing him of espionage, and in June, with the approval of the deputy people's commissar of the department, he was arrested.
After a month of interrogation, the prince admitted to knowing some British intelligence officers at the London School of Slavic Languages, but denied carrying out any of their assignments. He also claimed that, under pressure from "enemies of the people," he wrote a negative review of Alexander Fadeyev's novel "The Last of the Udege." In Chekist terms, this meant: “Being in close contact with exposed enemies of the people, Mirsky was recruited by the Averbakhites for Trotskyist work in Soviet literature.”
The extrajudicial Special Conference sentenced him to eight years in a forced labor camp for "suspicion of espionage." Mirsky arrived in Kolyma in September 37.
His work record showed a second-category disability, which granted him some benefits when applying for a job. However, he was assigned a brutal job—as a lumberjack. In November and December 1937, Mirsky worked every day without a day off, fulfilling only 50% of his quota.
"Poor work ethic. Malingering. Poor tool handling." (Mirsky's "labor characteristics" from the workday record card)
Mirsky was not particularly healthy; even outside his prison, his acquaintances described him as "advanced" (the prince was 45 at the time). In March 1938, a camp doctor diagnosed him with a heart defect, decompensated arthritis, atherosclerosis, and rheumatism. He was transferred to guard duty, but the authorities continued to view him as a malingerer: "Mirsky is being artificially ill, deliberately disobeying orders and instructions. He often sleeps at work. I will fire him from work. Shop supervisor."
In February 1939, in the village of Atka, he was diagnosed with myocarditis, edema, and frostbite on his right toe, and was deemed worthy of being sent to the camp's disabled section. Svyatopolk-Mirsky died of exhaustion at the "Invalidny" camp site, 23 kilometers from Magadan.
"...On June 7 of this year, prisoner Dmitry Petrovich Mirsky, personal number 136848, who died on June 6, 1939, was buried. He was buried at a depth of 1,5 meters, with his head to the west, 800 meters to the east of his post. Dezh. commandant Bolotnikov. Lekpom Albynin. Camp elder Biryukov." (from the burial certificate of prisoner Mirsky)
Mirsky was rehabilitated in 1962 after a petition from his 74-year-old sister, Sofia Pokhitonova.
Sources: A. Biryukov, “Life on the Edge of Fate: Writers in Kolyma,” Novosibirsk, 2006; V. Perkhin, “On the history of the arrest and rehabilitation of D.P. Svyatopolk-Mirsky” // “Russian Literature”, No. 1, 1997
Writer Evgenia Ginzburg: "There is only one hell"
The "steep route" of Evgenia Ginzburg (1904-1977) began in December 1934 in Kazan, immediately after the murder Sergei Kirov In Leningrad. A journalist for the Krasnaya Tataria newspaper and a history teacher for the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), she began to be "worked on" at party meetings, accused of insufficient vigilance and pandering to Trotskyists. Arrests of "saboteurs" began in the immediate circle of Ginzburg and her husband, Pavel Aksyonov, the chairman of the Kazan City Council. She herself called this period "the prelude to the symphony of madness and horror that was 1937."
In the reality of the "Great Terror," any mention of or acquaintance with "enemies of the people" could become an accusation—friendly ties were severed, correspondence was destroyed.
They "cleaned out" the home library. The nanny scooped out the ashes by the bucketful. Radek's "Portraits and Pamphlets," Friedpian and Slutsky's "History of Western Europe," and Bukharin's "Economic Policy" burned. Even Stalin's "On the Opposition" had to be burned. Under the new circumstances, even it had become illegal. (source)
Evgenia Ginzburg was arrested on February 10, 1937, when she was summoned to the NKVD for a "conversation" about a former colleague at the editorial office. Investigators claimed that she "joined a counterrevolutionary Trotskyist terrorist organization that had committed the heinous murder of Comrade Kirov in Leningrad and was preparing terrorist acts against other leaders of the Soviet government."
In Kazan's Black Lake prison, Ginzburg was subjected to a torture conveyor belt—several days without sleep or food, with investigators rotating.
At the time, I thought my suffering was immeasurable. But a few months later, I learned that my conveyor belt was child's play compared to what was practiced later, beginning in June 1937. I was deprived of sleep and food, but I sat, not stood, for days on end. I was occasionally given water from the interrogator's decanter. I was not beaten. True, once Vevers [one of the investigators] almost killed me, but this happened under the influence of cocaine fumes, in an insane state, and terribly frightened Vevers himself. (source)
Pavel Aksyonov was also arrested and sentenced to death with confiscation of property, but this was later commuted to 15 years in a labor camp. In April, his wife was also sentenced to ten years in prison, followed by Ginzburg's transfer to the Yaroslavl detention center.
Initially, the prison cells were intended to be single-occupancy, but due to overcrowding, "compaction" began—prisoners were placed in pairs. As a deterrent, each inmate was given a solitary confinement—five days in a cold, unheated basement in their underwear.
The bread is moldy before lunch. The walls are completely green. The linens are always damp. All my joints ache, as if something is gnawing at them.
In 1939, the prisoners of the isolation ward were transferred from prison to forced labor camps: a stage began in Vladivostok, which ended with arrival in Magadan.
The main place of work for female prisoners in Kolyma was the agricultural camp "Elgen", where Ginzburg stayed until 1944, alternating work in the logging industry with positions as a poultry farmer and teacher in "baby house"She was then sent to work as a paramedic at the hospital in the village of Taskan, where she met her future husband, imprisoned doctor Anton Walter. A transfer to Belichya Hospital followed, which helped her survive until the end of her sentence.
After her release, Ginzburg remained in Kolyma, finding work as a kindergarten teacher. But in 1948-1949, repeated arrests began in Magadan—they targeted former prisoners who had completed their "tens" and settled outside. On October 21, 1949, Ginzburg was arrested again. At the time, she was living in a barracks on the outskirts of Magadan with her son, Vasily Aksyonov, who had come to visit her, and her adopted daughter, Antonina.
My second arrest lasted only a month. No new charges were brought against me; they merely rewrote the old 37 records, clarifying a number of factual details. (source)
She was not given a new sentence, but was instead given a "permanent life sentence" in Magadan. This sentence ended after Stalin's death. In 1955, Ginzburg achieved full rehabilitation, and in 1957, she moved with her family to Lvov, and after her husband's death, to Moscow.
Ginsburg advised friends remember her phone number (AD-1-37-18) like this: "HELL is one - it's not difficult; 37 is the year I was imprisoned; 18 is how many years I spent in prison."
She spent the rest of her life writing her memoirs, the first part of which was published abroad. The book "The Steep Route" was first legally published in the USSR in 1988 in the Latvian magazine "Daugava."
Sources: E. Ginzburg, "The Steep Route"; A. Litvin, "Two Investigative Cases of Evgenia Ginzburg", Kazan, 1994
Poet Mikhail Drai-Khmara: "I've lost a lot of weight."
Professor of the Kyiv Academy of Sciences, graduate of St. Petersburg University, philologist and poet Mikhail Drai-Khmara (1889-1939) was first arrested in March 1933 on charges of participating in a “counter-revolutionary organization at the Kamenets-Podolsk University,” but due to lack of evidence, he was released two months later.
The case was closed in 1934, but after it, Dry-Khmara lost his job, losing the opportunity to publish and engage in professional activities.
In 1936, the poet was arrested again and sentenced to five years in a labor camp on trumped-up charges of belonging to a nationalist-terrorist group.
В letters To his family, he described in detail his path to death in Kolyma:
I suffered from insomnia all the time - I didn’t sleep for 3 weeks, because I had neither a place nor a bed, and it was cold in the unheated tent, and it was -30 degrees below zero outside. I've lost a lot of weight. The fat deposits that used to accumulate on my chest and stomach have completely disappeared. My chest is just skin and bones: all my ribs are visible. The veins on my arms and legs have bulged out, like those of old people, like my late grandmother's, which always amazed and surprised me. My body has generally weakened, although I haven't suffered any serious illness. Sometimes, especially after lunch, I can barely drag myself to work, wondering how I'll ever move a pick or a shovel, but then I overcome this weakness, start moving, and get back to normal. My arms hurt the most because they're the ones I have to work with the most, and they're as weak as a child's.
The last letter is dated August 1938, Dry-Khmara died In January 1939, officially due to "weakened cardiac function." The exact location of his burial is not indicated in the documents; the landmark of his unmarked grave is the Utinaya River in Kolyma, near the village of Orotukan.
Source: M. Drai-Khmara, “Letters from Kolyma” // “Zvezda”, No. 9, 1998
Student Elena Glinka: "Dead women were dragged by their feet to the door."
Elena Glinka (1926-2001) left one of the most horrific testimonies about the post-war Kolyma Gulag in her “Kolyma Tram of Medium Heaviness” - description a brutal two-day gang rape of female prisoners, who were effectively sold to criminals and ex-convicts by a convoy.
They raped under the command of the tram driver, who from time to time waved his arms and shouted: “To horseback!..” At the command “Stop talking!” they fell away, reluctantly giving way to the next one, who was standing in full sexual readiness. The dead women were dragged by the feet to the door and piled in a pile by the threshold. The rest were revived—doused with water—and the line formed again.
One of the story's heroines is Glinka herself, who doesn't give her name, a "Leningrad student" who was "lucky": "The mine's party organizer chose her for two days. Out of respect for him, no one bothered the student anymore, and the party organizer himself even gave her a gift—a new comb, a rare commodity in the camp."
Glinka, a student at the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute, was sent to the camps in 1951, convicted She was convicted of treason for being in German-occupied territory during the war (even earlier, in 1949, her father, boatswain Semyon Glinka, was repressed and died in prison in 1954).
After her testimony was published in 1989, there were readers who did not believe the horrors described, and the former prisoner responded to them as follows:
In the press, two polar opposite opinions sometimes collide: some try to uncover the truth, while others refute it, "expose" it, put a spoke in its wheel, express displeasure—why, they say, bring up the past, etc., etc. Or they sugarcoat it, embellish it. Well, let's then fall silent forever, as we have been silent for decades, let's hide in our corners and shake with fear, as under Stalin, let's shut up, and then let the next generations learn the terrible experience of those who came before them in their own way. I sacrificed my name, my feminine self, to reveal the truth. My sacrifice is great.
Source: E. Glinka, "The Kolyma Tram of Medium Heaviness"; E. Glinka, “I Sacrificed My Name” // Magadan Komsomolets, October 21, 1990
Aircraft designer Sergei Korolev: "They'll kill him without an obituary."
The Great Terror broke the career of engineer Sergei Korolev at its peak.
A graduate of the Moscow Higher Technical School, in 1930 he began working at the Central Aerodynamic Institute, and in 1933 he moved to the Jet Research Institute, where he became the head of a department.
In 1937, purges began at the research institute, with the director, Ivan Kleimenov, listed as an "enemy of the people." In early 1937, he received a government prize for developing new types of weapons, but in January 1938, he was executed as a "spy" and "saboteur." During the investigation, Kleimenov was forced to slander Korolev, claiming he was a member of a "counterrevolutionary Trotskyist organization within the research institute."
Korolev was arrested in the summer of 1938, but the engineer did not provide details of the torture investigation in his later letter to Stalin. mentioningwhat's his “subjected to physical repression and abuse” (it is known that Korolev’s colleague, designer Valentin Glushko beat pieces of rubber hoses with metal fillings). It was probably then that the aircraft designer's jaw was broken.
The future legendary designer was sentenced to ten years of forced labor in a labor camp.
He confessed when he was told that if he didn't sign today, his wife would be arrested tomorrow and his daughter would be sent to an orphanage. So, to save his family, he signed a confession and decided to deny everything in court. My mother was constantly afraid that she, too, might be arrested, and she was prepared for this possibility: all the adoption papers had been prepared in advance in the name of my grandmother, my mother's mother. But in court, my father wasn't allowed to say a single word. The court retired for a deliberation that lasted only a few minutes, and then they read out the guilty verdict: 10 years in a forced labor camp. (of a story Natalia Koroleva, daughter of an aircraft designer)
Even a brief stay in the Kolyma camps during Stalin's reign was enough to cause ill health (at best) or death. Korolev spent eight months at the Maldyak mine in 1939 and became a "living corpse." Spas His other prisoner, the barracks elder, was the former director of the Moscow Aircraft Plant, Mikhail Usachev, who ordered the transfer of the exhausted scientist to the medical unit.
In 1940, Korolev was summoned to Moscow, where his case was reviewed, replacing the camp sentence with eight years of imprisonment, and sending the engineer to a sharashka—a prison design bureau where convicted specialists were assembled.
On memories At the time, Korolev was a skeptic and pessimist, with a bleak outlook on the future. "They'll slam him without an obituary," was his favorite phrase.
In 1944, Korolev was granted early release, and as a freelance scientist, he spent the rest of his life developing long-range ballistic missiles and space rocket systems. His crowning triumph was the launch of the Vostok 1 spacecraft with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on board in 1961.
The consequences of interrogation and imprisonment in the camp haunted Korolev throughout his life, even after his release. The father of Russian cosmonauts died at age 59 during surgery to remove a polyp. According to his daughter, three experienced anesthesiologists were unable to insert an endotracheal tube into his trachea due to a broken jaw, and Korolev's heart stopped.
Source: Ya. Golovanov, "Korolev", 1994
Historian Andrei Amalrik: "...and many will be intimidated"
After Khrushchev's 1956 amnesty, Dalstroi and the camps within its system were abolished in Kolyma. The main places of detention for political prisoners shifted to Mordovia и PermianHowever, the Kolyma "zones" also accepted Soviet dissidents in the 60s-80s.
The son of a Soviet archaeologist, Andrei Amalrik (1938–1980), studied at the history department of Moscow State University in the 60s, but was expelled for a coursework project in which he defended the “Norman theory,” which was rejected by Soviet science.
In 1965, he was convicted and exiled to the Tomsk village of Guryevka. Officially, for "parasitism," but in reality, for his connections with foreign journalists and diplomats working in Moscow. After his release in 1966, he returned to Moscow and worked for a time at the Novosti Press Agency.
In 1969, Amalrik wrote a resonant book-essay "Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?", where he pointed to the inevitable collapse of the USSR. His outlook on the future of Russia was pessimistic:
So, what does this people, bereft of religion and morality, believe in and what guides them? They believe in their own national strength, which other nations should fear, and they are guided by the consciousness of the power of their regime, which they themselves fear. The horrors of the Russian revolutions of 1905-07 and 1917-20 will then seem like mere idyllic images.
In 1970, for his work, he was sentenced by the court to three years in a labor camp under Article 190-1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR - "dissemination of knowingly false fabrications defaming the Soviet social and state system."
Having pleaded not guilty and refusing to participate in the trial, Amalrik said in his final statement:
Neither the regime's witch hunt nor its particular example – this trial – inspire in me the slightest respect, or even fear. I understand, however, that such trials are designed to intimidate many, and many will be intimidated, but still I think that the process of ideological emancipation that has begun is irreversible.
Amalrik served his sentence in penal colony 261/3 near the village of Talaya in the Magadan Region. He survived the camp by finding light work—as a librarian, then as a painter.
Officially, the workday was eight hours long and the same wages as outside, but without bonuses. In reality, prisoners worked more but were paid less. The wages were distributed as follows: 50% for camp maintenance, 50% for food, clothing, a bunk in the barracks, heating, lighting, water, food from the kiosk, newspapers, magazines, and books, and 50% for savings. "To deprive a kiosk" is a favorite expression among officers—it's not enough to earn money; you have to be free of violations. My monthly gross salary was 96 rubles; over three months, I received 9 rubles net.
The situation with the camps in Kolyma in the early 70s description Amalrika was as follows: for a population of 400 thousand, the region had eight colonies, two prisons, and 20 pre-trial detention cells, in which 1,5% of the region’s population was held.
In July 1973, in Magadan, Amalrik was again sentenced to three years in a labor camp under the same article: “dissemination of knowingly false fabrications defaming the Soviet system.”
I had four interrogations and four confrontations. The prosecution was based solely on the testimony of prisoners—both voluntary and forced informants. I was wary of writing in the camp—but what and how did I say it? The investigators' interpretations were unceremonious. [One prisoner] allegedly heard me say that "many Jews want to leave the USSR to engage in commercial activity"—the investigator twisted this into the assertion that "the USSR is a spiritual prison for Jews." And he testified that when he hung up a poster "with love" with portraits of Politburo members, I said that "it's high time they all went to the crematorium."
After a four-month hunger strike in protest and requests for clemency from around the world, the sentence was changed to three years of exile, which Amalrik spent in Magadan.
He returned to Moscow in May 1975, emigrated almost immediately, and died in a car accident in Spain in 1980.
Source: A. Amalrik, "Notes of a Dissident"
Philologist Konstantin Azadovsky: "It was a happy day when I was freed."
Leningrad German philologist Konstantin Azadovsky (b. 1941) came to the attention of the KGB in the late 70s, and a file was opened on him started, as the documents described, "with a tinge of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." By this time, Azadovsky had graduated from the philological department of Leningrad State University, translated German poets, taught at an art school, and defended his dissertation.
He was accused of "authoring a number of ideologically damaging literary works, disseminating oral fabrications among his circle that defamated the founders and leaders of the Soviet state, maintaining contacts with foreigners, and, in conversations with them, compromising the domestic political activities of the Soviet government." But they decided not to imprison him for "slandering the Soviet system."
In late 1980, police officers came to the philologist's apartment to conduct a search. As Azadovsky noted, the search was purely formal—they only inspected the bookcases. A small bag of marijuana was "unexpectedly" discovered on one of the shelves. The witnesses provided the testimony the police needed, and the scholar was arrested.
The Leningrad intelligentsia spoke out in his defense: writers, theater directors, and six honorary employees of the Pushkin House petitioned for a change in the measure of restraint.
References to his works and their scientific significance had no effect on the repressive machinery—Azadovsky awaited trial in Pretrial Detention Center No. 1 (Kresty). The criminal case received added weight from an expert examination of the confiscated books, which were deemed "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." Azadovsky received a two-year prison sentence in the Kolyma town of Susuman.
In the "zone," he worked in a sewing workshop. To prevent him from being eligible for early release, the prison administration labeled him a "malicious violator of the rules," conducting repeated searches, and a visiting prosecutor threatening a second criminal case.
In this situation, in August 1982, Azadovsky decided to slit his wrists, for which he was placed in solitary confinement for a month. Upon his release, he was sent to a hospital for "mental health treatment."
The philologist spent the remainder of his sentence in a construction crew and was amnestied in December 1982—formally, the pardon was announced in honor of the 60th anniversary of the USSR, unofficially—due to the death of Brezhnev and the replacement of General Secretary by Yuri Andropov.
Of course, it was a happy day when I was released from the Kolyma zone. It was winter, in the town of Susuman in the Magadan region, not far from the border with Yakutia. It was freezing cold, below 60 degrees Celsius. For someone from European Russia, it sounds scary, but there it's much easier to bear. Svetlana, my wife, met me, we left the zone, went to the hotel, and for the first time in two years, I took a sip of wine and immediately got drunk—literally from 50 grams. Then we took a bus to Magadan and from there flew to Moscow, where friends met us at Domodedovo. (memories Azadovsky)
Azadovsky was rehabilitated in 1989 and recognized as a victim of political repression in 1993.
He is still engaged in research activities and has published several works About Russian writers - a biography of the poet Nikolai Klyuev, articles on the work of writers of the Silver Age.
Sources: P. Druzhinin, "Ideology and Philology. The Case of Konstantin Azadovsky," Moscow, 2016; Y. Shchekochikhin, “Slaves of GB”, Samara, 1999