A "CHANGE OF CABINET"
_Kem Camp's New Rulers — A Military Parade — A Much-Married Tchekist —
Old Abuses Continued._
In the spring of 1924 the _personnel_ of the concentration camp on
Popoff Island was changed. The members of the Uslon (Direction of the
Northern Camps for Special Purposes) and, at the monastery itself, all
the Tchekists remained at their posts. This was what the prisoners
called the "change of cabinet."
A Moscow Tchekist, Ivan Ivanovitch Kirilovsky, formerly a sergeant in
one of the Guards regiments, was appointed commandant of the Kem camp in
place of Gladkoff. As stated in an earlier chapter, he refused to take
over until a commission was appointed by the central Government to
examine the camp accounts. When the commission discovered that gross
extravagance and fraud had taken place, Gladkoff was sentenced to
transportation for five years for "peculation and a negligent attitude
towards his exalted (?) duties." Mamonoff, who was directly responsible
for the frauds, was not punished at all; and, for that matter, Gladkoff
himself was pardoned two days after his sentence and given a new
appointment in the Gpu at Kaluga.
Before Kirilovsky's arrival it was said in the camps that he was a
decent fellow. We were soon to have ocular demonstration of his
"decency." Kirilovsky is still in command of the camp, with the same
assistants.
His arrival was the occasion for an elaborate ceremony. Eichmans,
already familiar to the reader, whose dream was to turn the camps into
military colonies of the Araktcheeff[32] epoch, paraded the starving
prisoners, including women and children, several days in succession, and
made them execute movements, obey words of command, and so on, in
military style. When Kirilovsky approached the camp, we were drawn up in
two ranks.
"Attention! . . . Right dress!"
The headman went up to Kirilovsky with his report.
"All correct in the labour regiment under my command."
The commanders of all the labour companies did the same. Then Kirilovsky
greeted us:
"Good day!"
"Good —— day!"
This cruel farce went on for nearly an hour. At last Kirilovsky asked
whether anyone had any request to make, or any complaint against the
administration. His question, of course, remained unanswered. If anyone
had had the audacity to make a complaint, he would have been taken to
the "Sekirka" (the place of punishment) that very day and been flogged
to death with "Smolensky sticks."
Kirilovsky's assistant on the administrative side was, as I have
mentioned, Toropoff, a typical vagabond, with goggling sheep's eyes. He
was formerly a platoon commander in the 95th Division of Gpu troops,
which does guard duties on Popoff Island. Apart from his devastating
stupidity, his principal characteristic is that he gets married
everywhere he goes. On Popoff Island he was not content with a harem of
women prisoners, and got married — for the sixth time — to a
"cod-eater." ("Cod-eaters" is the name given by the prisoners to the
inhabitants of the fishing settlements round the camps, whose main
article of food is cod.)
Kirilovsky's assistant on the economic side was one Nikolai Nikolaevitch
Popoff. He was always extremely well dressed, was not a Tchekist and not
even a Communist. He was a most enigmatic personality. Sometimes he said
he had been an officer in the Guards, sometimes an official with special
duties in one of the Tsarist Ministries, sometimes Trotsky's adjutant.
He was, in any case, a man of very good education and outward polish. He
had an impediment in his speech, and was malignant and cruel in his
dealings with "K.R.'s." When the prisoners passed him on their way to
work, Popoff used to say to his suite of Tchekists — in a loud voice, so
that the "K.R.'s" might hear:
"There's a pack of criminals — do you hear? — criminals! They're our
enemies. We'll put the wind up the whole crowd of them!"
The "change of cabinet" made little difference to the situation of the
prisoners. The only modification was that "putting the wind up" them,
and the thieving of State funds and their modest rations by the
administration, became more constant than before. Gladkoff stole openly,
Kirilovsky under a camouflage of "honesty."
The Solovetsky life and regime in general — the heavy toll of labour,
the reprisals, the self-indulgent manner of living of the _personnel_ —
remained as they had been.
[Footnote 32: Count Araktcheeff (1769-1834), the great Roman military
organiser. The military colonies scheme, which he endeavoured
(unsuccessfully) to carry out, was one of the many projects of the
Emperor Alexander I.]