THE WOMEN'S FATE
_Horrible Companionship — How Card Losses are Paid — A Tchekist's Harem
— "Rouble" and "Half-rouble" Women — Venereal Diseases._
But the greatest blessing the politicals enjoy is that their wives and
children are not compelled to associate with the women of the _shpana_.
The company of these women is horrible.
There are at present about six hundred women in the Solovetsky camps. At
the monastery they are quartered in the "Women's Building" in the
Kremlin; on Popoff Island they occupy the whole of hut No. 1 and
portions of other huts. Three-quarters of them are the wives,
mistresses, relatives or simply the accomplices of the common criminals.
Women are officially transported to the Solovky (and to the Narym
region) for "persistent prostitution." At regular intervals, in all the
large towns of European and Asiatic Russia, raids against prostitutes
are carried out in order that they may be sent to the concentration
camps. The prostitutes, who under the Soviet regime have combined to
form regular professional unions, from time to time organise street
processions in Moscow and Petrograd by way of protest against the raids
and the transportations; but this is of little avail.
The character and ways of the female _shpana_ are so savage that a
description of them, to anyone unacquainted with life in the Solovetsky
prison, may sound like the delusions of a madman.
For example, when they go to the bath-house, they undress a long time
before in their huts and walk about stark naked, to the accompaniment of
roars of laughter and approving remarks from the camp _personnel_.
The female criminals are just as addicted to gambling card games as the
men. If they lose, they hardly ever have any money, decent clothes or
food with which to pay. In consequence, the most barbarous scenes may be
witnessed every day in the camps. The women play cards on the condition
that the loser must immediately go to one of the men's huts and give
herself to ten men one after the other. This must take place in the
presence of regular witnesses. The camp administration has never
intervened to put a stop to this loathsomeness.
The influence the female criminals have on educated women, "K.R."
prisoners, can be imagined. The foulest cursing, in which the names of
God, Christ, the Virgin and all the saints are called upon, universal
drunkenness, indescribable debauchery, thieving, filth, syphilis — all
this must in the long run be too much for the most stubborn nature.
To send an honest woman to the Solovky is to turn her in a few months
into something worse than a prostitute — a piece of dumb, dirty flesh,
an object of barter, at the disposal first and foremost of the camp
_personnel_ itself.
Every Tchekist in the Solovky has from three to five concubines at the
same time. Toropoff, who was appointed assistant to the Kem commandant
on the administrative side in 1924, established a regular harem in the
camp, continually replenished according to his choice and at his orders.
The Red soldiers who guard the camp violate women unpunished.
According to the camp rules, twenty-five women — "K.R.'s" and _shpana_ —
are selected every day to act as servants to the Red divisions guarding
the Solovky. The soldiers are so lazy that the prisoners even make their
beds.
The headman of the Kem camp, Tchistakoff, not only has his dinner cooked
and his boots cleaned by women, but they even have to _wash_ him!
The youngest and prettiest women are usually chosen, and the Tchekists
are free to treat them as they please.
All the women in the Solovky are _officially_ divided into three
categories: (1) a rouble woman (_rublevaya_), (2) a half-rouble woman
(_poltinitchnaya_), and (3) a fifteen kopek woman (_piatialtynnaya_).
If one of the camp authorities requires a "first-class" woman, i.e., a
young "K.R." who has not been long in the camp, he says to the sentry:
"Bring me a rouble woman."
Honest women who refuse the "improved ration" which the Tchekists give
their concubines very soon die of under-nourishment or tuberculosis.
Such cases are particularly frequent on Solovetsky Island, where the
bread usually does not last through the winter — i.e., till navigation
begins and fresh supplies can be brought — and the already miserable
rations are cut down by a half.
The Tchekists and the _shpana_ infect the women with syphilis and other
venereal diseases. How widespread these diseases are in the Solovky may
be judged from this fact. Until recently the syphilitics, both male and
female, were quartered on Popoff Island, in a special hut (No. 8). But
their number increased to such an extent in the few months before I
escaped that hut No. 8 would not hold them all, and the administration
could think of no better solution of the problem than to put the
patients in other huts, occupied by uninfected persons. Of course, this
only led to a still more rapid increase in the number of cases.
If their solicitations meet with resistance, the Tchekists do not shrink
from heaping insult on their victims. I will mention two out of a number
of such cases known to me.
At the end of 1924 a very pretty Polish girl of seventeen was brought to
the Solovky. She had been sentenced to be shot, along with her father
and mother, for "espionage in the interests of Poland." The parents were
shot, but as the girl was under age, the supreme penalty was in her case
commuted to transportation to the Solovky for ten years.
The girl had the misfortune to attract Toropoff, but had the pluck to
refuse his disgusting proposals. Thereupon Toropoff ordered her to be
brought to the commandant's office, accused her of concealing
"counter-revolutionary" documents on her person, stripped her naked and
searched her under the eyes of the whole camp guard — examining with
care those parts of her body where it seemed to him that the "documents"
might best be concealed.
One day in February, 1925, a Tchekist named Popoff appeared in the
women's hut very drunk, accompanied by a number of other Tchekists, also
drunk. He went up to Madame X's bed. This lady belonged to the highest
social circles and had been sent to the Solovky for ten years after her
husband had been shot. Popoff dragged her out of bed and said:
"Won't you come outside the wire with us?" (It was there that women were
violated.)
Madame X was in a state of raving hysteria till the next morning.
Uneducated and half-educated "K.R." women are exploited by the Tchekists
without scruple. Particularly lamentable is the fate of the many Cossack
women, whose husbands, fathers and brothers have been shot and they
themselves transported.