THE TYRANNY OF THE CRIMINALS
_The "Distributing Hut" — Robbed the First Night — Criminals' Unwritten
Code — Punishment of a Traitor — The Professor's Parcel — Successful
Blackmail._
All newly arrived prisoners are sent first of all to the "distributing
hut" of the camp on Popoff Island.
Hardly have you set foot on the now accursed soil of the Solovky before
you feel the power of the _shpana_. When our party, consisting of
"counter-revolutionaries" from the Caucasus, bishops and monks, a group
of Casino-ites and many others, arrived at hut No. 6 (the "distributing
hut"), we were met by armed Tchekists, themselves prisoners. They wanted
to know first of all whether there were any Gpu employees or any
criminal agents among us, for if so they might not go into the hut; the
ordinary criminals would kill them at once. Several men stood aside.
The rest of us entered hut No. 6. It was a huge wooden shed, filled to
overflowing with _shpana_. There were board-beds in two tiers, one above
the other. The beds and the floor under the lower tier were covered with
half-naked bodies. The stench was so awful that I nearly fell down.
Drunken yells and drunken weeping, the most disgusting abuse. There was
a feeble glow from a lamp in a corner.
I describe the "distributing hut" in some detail because all new
arrivals have to go through this torturing stage of their captivity,
and, further, because nothing could be more characteristic of the whole
conditions in the Solovetsky camps.
Having been warned by our earlier experience at Rostoff, we lay down on
our things, putting them under our heads. But this precaution proved to
be inadequate. I was awakened during the night by a fearful noise.
Staring into the semi-darkness, I perceived with horror that all our
things had been stolen — our provisions plundered, our baskets,
suitcases and boxes broken open. Yells resounded from one corner, where
one of the _shpana_ who had taken too much for himself was being
sentenced to a beating by an assize of his fellow-criminals. In another
corner three criminals were hitting one of their comrades over the head
with pieces of wood; he was dripping with blood, but still refused to
give up the linen he held tightly under his arm. On the upper tier of
beds, close to the ceiling, the national card game, _tri listika_, was
already being played with our money. At the door a knot of _shpana_ were
conducting trade negotiations with the sentry, exchanging somebody's rug
for spirits.
We "K.R.'s" decided next morning that it was useless to make a
complaint. But one of the politicals in our party, a Social
Revolutionary, indignantly told the commandant about the behaviour of
the _shpana_ who had left him with only one shirt in winter time. The
commandant, for form's sake, appeared in the hut and called in timid
tones:
"Give back the things! What disgraceful conduct!"
The criminals answered with a roar of laughter; but the next night they
would have killed the "S.R." if we had not defended him.
Next morning an old inhabitant of the camp, Bishop Illarion Trotsky, the
right-hand man of the late Patriarch Tikhon, was ordered to conduct our
party to hut No. 9.
An unwritten internal discipline binds the ordinary criminals together.
These starving, half-naked gallows-birds, dying by scores daily from
scurvy and syphilis, never take a risk. The peculiar favour and
protection which all the authorities of the Solovky, without exception,
extend to the _shpana_ is very simply explained.
The hostility which the ordinary criminal instinctively feels towards
the "K.R.", the educated _barin_, is felt in an equal degree by every
Tchekist in the Solovky, though he also sees in each "K.R." a
counter-revolutionary, a Monarchist, a _bourgeois_. A further reason why
complaints against the _shpana_ are fruitless is that a large part of
the Solovetsky administration are closely connected with the criminal
classes, not only in their mentality, but in their pre-Revolution
antecedents.
When I arrived at Popoff Island, there were about 1,400 _shpana_ in the
camp; the number of "K.R.'s" could have been divided into this total
several times, and there were only seventy "politicals and party men."
The last-named, for reasons which I will explain later, do no work at
all, and "Mother" was continually letting the _shpana_ off labour of all
kinds, so that the whole immense burden of the work to be done was
placed upon the shoulders of the "K.R.'s."
This is still the case, although in a lesser degree: the _shpana_ do
little work, the politicals none at all, and the "K.R.'s" bear the whole
burden.
The criminals' curious code of ethics combines all the _shpana_ of the
Solovetsky Islands into one indivisible unit. This code of ethics is
ruthlessly applied. If the criminals discover that there is a
_sutchenyi_ among their number — this word means in their language a
turncoat, a traitor, who is betraying their secrets to the authorities —
he is immediately put to death in the most cruel manner. Nowhere is the
principle "one for all and all for one" put into application in so high
a degree as among the common criminals of the Solovky.
In the middle of 1924 a gang of footpads, who had for a long time evaded
all attempts to capture them, were arrested in Moscow. Their leader was
a bandit named Moiseiko; his fellow-robbers nicknamed him Petlura, for
which reason the members of the band were called "Petlurists." These
footpads had on their conscience, besides a number of armed robberies,
many "wet affairs" (a "wet affair" means a murder in the thieves'
language). One of the most active of the Petlurists, known as
Avrontchik, turned _sutchenyi_, betrayed the gang and brought about its
arrest.
The gang consisted of thirty-eight persons, both men and women. Thirty
of them were "sent to the left" (thieves' jargon for "shot") in the
Butyrka prison in Moscow. Eight men, among them Avrontchik, and four
women (the wives of men who had been shot) were despatched to the
Solovky. When the "traitor" arrived at the "distributing hut," the
surviving Petlurists burst in and almost beat him to death. The male
Petlurists were arrested and Avrontchik taken to hospital. But he was
not safe even in hospital; the four women of the band entered the
hospital hut and killed Avrontchik, smashing in his skull.
The affair was referred to Moscow. The Gpu replied briefly: "shoot." In
November, 1924, the remaining Petlurists, men and women, fell to
Tchekist bullets, confirming by their death the principles of the
_shpana_.
If the _shpana_ do not shrink from murdering persons objectionable to
them, much less does the robbing of all and sundry seem to them a thing
to be boggled at. Further, they are compelled to rob by continual
hunger, cold — in the Solovky one quite often sees _shpana_ prisoners
_absolutely naked_ — and their passion for cards and drink.
Their robberies, the victims of which are invariably "K.R.'s," are
planned with quite professional ingenuity. As I have said, on our
arrival at Popoff Island we were moved from hut No. 6 to hut No. 9. This
hut is divided into four compartments by wooden partitions. In the first
compartment lived the headman of the camp, in the second the
Casino-ites, the third was the camp prison, and in the fourth were we
"K.R.'s," having a common wall with the prison.
Several times the _shpana_ played the following trick on us. They
committed some offence more serious than usual, and so, intentionally,
got into the prison; then they bored a hole in the wooden wall which
separated the prison from our quarters, quite close to the floor, and at
night, creeping noiselessly under the beds, stole our things, food and
money. If anyone tried to recover the things, they beat him to death.
The _shpana_ always shared their plunder with the prison guards and the
headman, so that nobody paid any attention to our complaints, and once
the headman declared that we ourselves had robbed each other.
Sometimes the robberies were followed by impudent blackmail, also with
the close connivance of the _personnel_. For example, among the
prisoners in our hut was Professor Krivatch-Niemanetz, a very old man,
over seventy. He was a Czech by nationality and had been employed in the
Commissariat for Foreign Affairs as a translator. He was sent to the
Solovky (for ten years) by virtue of that clause of the Criminal Code
under which foreigners are always sent there — Clause 66, "espionage for
the benefit of the international _bourgeoisie_." Of course he was
absolutely innocent. Krivatch-Niemanetz was very popular in the camp and
profoundly respected, mainly because he could speak nearly all the
languages in the world fluently, including Chinese, Japanese and
Turkish, not to mention all the European languages.
The Professor had received a parcel of things from the "Political Red
Cross," which was presided over by Madame Peshkova, the wife of Maxim
Gorky, and extended its help only to "politicals and party men." It
evidently regarded "K.R.'s" as simply bandits, delivered as such to the
caprice of Fate, the Solovetsky administration and the _shpana_.
He was as delighted with the parcel as a child, but alas! not for long.
The _shpana_ had got into the prison again; once more they broke through
the wall and stole our things, including Krivatch-Niemanetz's parcel. In
the morning the criminals had recourse to blackmail, a method of theirs
by this time familiar to us all; they sent to the Professor — by a
Tchekist — a letter in which they offered to give him back his things
for 6 tchervontsy (about £6). The Czech, freezing in the draughty hut,
accepted the offer as genuine despite our warnings, and sent the
_shpana_ — through the same Tchekist — all the money he had, leaving
himself literally without a kopek. As we expected, he never got either
his things or his money back!
Some time after this a number of the _shpana_ left the Solovky, among
them the men who had robbed the Professor. On their way south they sent
him a letter in which they promised "never to forget the dear Professor
to their last day."
The criminals regard stripping the "K.R.'s" almost as a point of honour,
but stripping their own comrades, their fellow-criminals, as a crime to
be severely punished. There is a special hut on Popoff Island in which
all the parcels for the "K.R.'s" and politicals on Solovetsky Island
received during the autumn and winter are kept until navigation opens
and it is possible to communicate with the monastery; when spring comes
they are sent to the monastery by a special steamer. Several times
members of the _shpana_ broke into this hut, enjoyed the fruits of their
pillage with impunity and received the full approval of their fellows.
But once, when a party plundered the hut at a time when some parcels for
ordinary criminals were there, they were cruelly man-handled by their
comrades and two of them actually killed.