Ivan Chistyakov
In nature, the day began as normal, but in Phalanx 7 it did not get off to the usual start. A ten-day Stakhanov shock-work campaign was declared, effective as of today, but it was only announced last night. So, we’ve had no time to prepare. Whether this was done intentionally or not, and by whom, we were unable to discover.
The blackboard with the statistics about brigades’ percentage fulfilment of their quotas under the Plan, which hung next to the guardroom, had been wiped clean, and next to it stood the phalanx’s red banner, the pride of Samokhvalova’s brigade. This banner knew all about shock workers, knew all about Stakhanov campaigns, and knew what women are capable of.
These were the early days of construction of the railway bridge. It was March 1934 and the stream of the River Uletui was still icebound. The temperature was in the region of minus 25 degrees, but the Second Track and the bridge could not wait for it to rise. Before the river thawed, foundation pits had to be dug and piers laid, because otherwise the deck between the spans would not be in place before the frosts of autumn, and that would disrupt the Plan.
While the preliminary works were under way, backfilling the dam, the women were talking among themselves about who would go down into the pits. Sceptics warned of dangers: they would flood; you would never get out; you would contract malaria, rheumatism. Some claimed the cold would give them all scurvy. Sit in a wet pit and you’ll soon know about it! Climb in if you’ve given up on living, because you can drown as well. You’ll drink your fill of water then! What do they care?
This last referred to the NKVD officers. They travel around in their special trains and watch us slaving here as they go by. We should feed them on gruel. The top brass won’t issue us rubber boots or gloves, and they suck up the last drop of our juices.
‘I’m coughing up blood.’ A juicy gobbet of spit landed in the snow. ‘Sodding screws! Don’t do it, girls! We’re not going down there! We’re just not!!’
Samokhvalova, brigade leader of these career criminals, shouted loudest of all.
‘What’s up with you? Are you out of your minds? You think we’re going into a pit! That’s not work for us, that’s not women’s work!! I’ll croak before I’ll do it. Find men to do this job. Whose bright idea was it to get a women’s phalanx to build a concrete bridge? They want us buried alive, the bastards. Right, girls, they say it’s got to start tomorrow, if they order us, I—’
‘We’ll none of us go!’ the brigade chorused. ‘What kind of fools do they take us for?!’
It was, however, essential to get this bridge built. To redeploy Phalanx 7 and take one of the men’s brigades off their work to replace them is just not feasible.
The women had to be talked round, and that means Samokhvalova’s girls, because they are the best brigade, exceeding their quota for ditches and trenches by 200 per cent. They’re a robust, cohesive team, a force to be reckoned with in terms of productivity.
Evening. A time when the meal you have eaten, together with rest, begins to renew your powers, and all manner of thoughts come to mind. Some are counting the days to freedom, remembering the life they left behind. Some, perhaps, are thinking of a family and so on. And some, no doubt, are thinking of escape. That will all be going on. They mend their belongings, reread letters for the hundredth time.
The hut was quiet, each person immersed in her own affairs and thoughts. Each one thinking only of herself.
The door creaked, describing a semicircle on the floor. The commander of the Armed Guards Unit entered. Some looked up, some didn’t. They are so accustomed to visits from the guards they would think it strange if the evening saw no one call. The newcomer sat down without a word, looking round at the women. For half an hour.
Samokhvalova broke the silence.
‘Well, why are you sitting there like you’re deaf and dumb?! I expect you’ve come to get us all down into that pit of yours.’
‘No! Why should I try to do that?’
All eyes were on the protagonists.
‘Give me a break!’
‘We’re not going into your pit,’ a voice proclaimed from somewhere in the upper bunks.
Samokhvalova lifted her head and silenced the speaker.
‘What are you doing answering for everyone? Who elected you? Haven’t you already got a brigade leader?
‘And you,’ she turns to their visitor, ‘push off. Go try your luck with Finogenova. They’re horses, not human beings.’
‘What do you mean, they’re horses?’
‘They’re the kind that work like mad. There’s no stopping them!’
‘But you work more, your percentages are higher, so you—’
‘So we are horses, are we?’
‘No. That’s not what I was saying. I want to say that you are the people we value most in the Soviet Union. That’s why I didn’t go to Finogenova first but came to you.’
‘Go on, give us more!’
‘I’m not going to butter you up, but I’ll tell you this. I came to talk to you because you are the best brigade. You’ll lose nothing by hearing me out, and then you can make your own minds up. It’s for you to decide. You’re not little children and I’m not going to tell you any fairy stories.’
‘You know what? Just pack it in! We’ll decide for ourselves on the bridge.’
‘Well, Samokhvalova, it often occurs to me that we are all rational human beings, and what we have in our heads is not junk but a brain. We think, we reason. You, for example, like everybody else, are calculating how soon the project will end, whether you’ll get remission and be released soon, but you don’t seem to have considered that how soon the project ends depends on all of you, and on you personally. Work out just how many cubic metres of spoil you have shifted this month. Pile that spoil up, stand back and take a look and you will see a veritable mountain. Then think how much your whole brigade has moved!
‘So, decide for yourself whether we have anything to talk about. You’re spitting fire now. The Armed Guards Unit are a bunch of so-and-sos, but when you need anything, a disagreement over measurement of quantities or work credits, it’s us you turn to. Tell me, have we ever refused to help? Not once! You think we are your enemies, a bunch of screws, but what harm have the guards done? None! Only good.’
‘You shoot people!’
‘That’s true, we do sometimes kill, but not people, not even something resembling a human being. Fascist degenerates. You have a few wet jobs on your own record, and a lot of people say you should be shot! Have we shot you?
‘If you work, benefit the state by honest toil, I promise you no one will lay a finger on you, not even here in the camps. But if you start stepping out of line, well, excuse me, in that case . . .
‘If I bring you, your team, free women who’ve volunteered to work here and say, “This Samokhvalova is in for eight years for violent crime and the rest of the brigade are just as bad,” what would they say? They’d be horrified! Why don’t you have them under guard? They’ll rob honest people, etc. But I have not come to you with any such words, or even thoughts at the back of my mind. I have approached you as an outstanding brigade, as people honestly working for Soviet power. You really ought to understand that.’
‘Oh, you all sing so prettily when you need to get us to work, but if we do get into hot water because you turn up late, or if we’re late back from work, it’s, “Oh, I can’t imagine how that could’ve happened!” Nobody wants to know.’
‘We do want to know. We’ll investigate and punish where it’s called for. But you are your own worst enemies. Why doesn’t the phalanx leader treat you with respect? Why doesn’t he appreciate his best brigade? You need to make him respect you. You need to make people respect you, not only in the phalanx but throughout BAM. Here people can make all the difference, by honest labour. We are offering you that right. It is a major privilege. That bridge is a crucial section of the project. Force people to respect you! Let the whole of BAM know all about you. I will negotiate with Finogenova’s brigade, and others. If not all, then some individuals will want to work on the bridge. We shall set up a new brigade which, just possibly, will not let you near the bridge.
‘I am giving you the right to choose and make up your minds. The company HQ has agreed to award a banner to those setting records on it.’
‘Don’t you be in such a hurry to go talking to Finogenova!’
‘I can’t delay. They will be offended and ask why I didn’t make them the offer. I simply do not have the right not to talk to them. If you agree to take on the bridge and let us set you to work on the east pier while others take the west, you can win the banner and the right to the centre pier.’
‘All right! Just make sure we aren’t drowned!’
‘Now, then. I was not expecting that from you! Did you drown digging the trenches? I’ll leave you to decide for yourselves.’
The silence that had persisted during the conversation was broken by a shifting of benches, a shuffling of feet, and sighing. Late into the night the brigade was talking it over, late into the night nobody slept.
What would the others say if Samokhvalova took on the bridge?
In the morning, the brigade stood by the guardhouse and was not the first to go out to work, which meant they had agreed.
They went to the bridge. They checked the dam was not leaking. They looked at the spall. They touched the wooden frame of the future foundation pit, looked at each other and, without speaking, started driving the crowbars into the frozen ground.
‘Scabs!’ the other brigades shouted as they passed.
‘Samokhvalova! You’ve sold out!’
Many thoughts passed through the brigade’s minds while Finogenova and the other [illegible] went by. Some paused in their work, held the crowbar uncertainly, no longer consistently hit the ground at the exact same spot.
This went on for a couple of hours while they picked out the [illegible] for explosives.
They primed the explosives, moved away and: A-aarhh!
Chunks of frozen earth flew in every direction, mixed with snow and smoke. And along with the explosion came the discharging of a tension that had been weighing on them. The shovels were quickly put to work clearing the site, and the crowbars began to bite deeper and more readily. The foundation pit took shape.
‘Congratulations on a good beginning, on shifting the first spoil,’ the commander of the Armed Guards Unit exclaimed. ‘The congratulations when you finish will come from the leader of this great project, and from your friends and relatives.’
‘All right, all right. Get out the way!’
On the first day, victory was Samokhvalova’s and the banner was firmly placed on the bridge. Sometimes, however, it passed to Finogenova’s brigade, which had gone to work on the west pier. The rules of the contest were simple. The depth of the pit was measured at the edges with a batten and the banner transferred to the east or west.
The middle pier was awarded to Samokhvalova, and with it the banner was permanently fixed in one place until construction of the bridge was completed.
Zek women’s brigade loading wagons with subsoil for track subgrade. BAM – the Second Track
Today, however, the banner has been taken back, absurdly, over a trifle. Confiscated. Like it or lump it.
The brigade is tense, on edge. The tension could boil over at any moment, and then who knows what might happen. Everything will depend on the situation at the time. It could burst as a storm of indignation, anger and hatred for everything in the world. It could come as an outburst of enthusiasm, pride and delight. Today will be decisive. We felt the tension, sensed that the storm would break in the evening, knew that Samokhvalova’s brigade was supposed to hand over the banner to Finogenova, perhaps even to Budnikova, leader of the brigade of down-and-dirty 35-ers. There was nothing we could do to help.
Shedvid, the women’s brigade organizer for the whole of BAM, had blundered.* She had decided the banner should revert to being transferable. They knew that today would be Samokhvalova’s first day on ballast and that she would not be able to notch up 250 per cent of the quota. They decided to wait and see what happened.
A delegate came from Budnikova to Samokhvalova to see how things stood. Another came from Finogenova. The delegates didn’t speak a word, the brigade was silent. Everybody looked glumly at the ground. That evening everything would be decided at the club. The armed guards turned out for the test measurements. The picture was clear to us, but how was it to be announced? Trying to fudge the issue would only make matters worse. Shedvid had created this mess, it was up to her to sort it out.
The banner was awarded to Budnikova.
After that it was sheer pandemonium.
There was noise, chaos, shouting, cursing, and laughter, but what laughter. Cracked, hysterical laughter giving way to hoarseness and hissing, that was how Samokhvalova’s women reacted.
‘Right, girls, everybody out! Every last one of us.’ Samokhvalova’s voice boomed through the general uproar.
A silence descended and the brigade walked out of the club without another word.
There was an awkward pause, nobody had a response. Even Budnikova seemed uncertain about whether or not to accept the banner. After half an hour everything began to cool down as people went outside and began talking to each other. Soon the club was empty and the banner languished up on the platform. What would happen now?
The following day we expected refusals to go out to work, from Samokhvalova, from Budnikova, and many in other brigades.
This prediction was spot on. There was no sign of Samokhvalova’s brigade in the morning. The rest came out to work, but there would be no records broken today, just enough done to qualify for a basic ration.
If you turned up during this time in Samokhvalova’s hut, you would be on the receiving end of logs, bowls, boards, boots, anything that came to hand, anything that could cause injury, and all of it seasoned with a cascade of expletives of such inventiveness you could never hope to match them.
From the direction of the hut we heard a great commotion, shrieking and screaming as Shedvid was seen off the premises. Their strike could go on for three to five days, but the project cannot wait, the building work cannot be postponed, there are deadlines to be met. We decided to try an approach at noon. I was very agitated, no less so than the brigade. Hell! I was met by bedlam.
‘Come in, come in, you screw. If you dare!’
Dong! A bowl hurled from an upper bunk clangs against an opposite upright.
‘Who are you throwing that at?’ My yell cut short a rising chorus of catcalls. ‘Is that your way of saying, “Good afternoon”?’
The question extended their moment of uncertainty, which I needed to exploit if all was not to be lost and I was to leave with anything to show.
‘Is your storekeeper here?’
‘That’s me!’ a woman washing her hair in a bowl says.
‘No wonder I couldn’t recognize you, that hair makes you look like a mermaid.’
‘More like a witch,’ a voice corrected me.
‘Ha ha ha,’ someone guffawed. ‘The witch from Bald Mountain!’
‘Not from Bald Mountain, only from Uletui. Give her a broom. She needs a good demon. Saddle the boss! We shouldn’t just have them riding us, we ought to have a go on them.’
‘I’ve not ridden you and have no plans to do so in the future.’ ‘But would you?’
‘No, I can’t do it with people watching.’
‘Would you ride on Shedvid? If she shows herself here again, the whore, we’ll tear her apart.’
‘The parasite!’
A hail of choice curses filled the air.
‘Well, why are you blaming me?’
‘Why are we blaming you? Why, are you going to stand up to her? All you security guards grow fat on our blood.’
‘And have you had a lot of your blood spilt?’
‘More than you!’
‘Where?’
‘Right here, in your camp!’
‘Has somebody knifed you? How and where?’
‘Your guards, your secret policemen.’
‘That’s not true!’
‘But we get plenty of bad blood from you.’
‘We get more from you. There’s thirty of you in this brigade, three hundred in the phalanx, and only four of us. Who gets more grief? You stuff it up our noses and down our throats, enough for lunch and dinner and some to spare. You women are hot-tempered, you sometimes get worked up over nothing, pointlessly. If we look at this calmly, you are absolutely in the right, but when there’s all this shouting and screaming there’s no telling what you want exactly, and you may end up with the opposite.’
‘We know where this is leading. Go on, persuade us!’
Two of them started singing, ‘We are not afraid of work, we just ain’t gonna do it.’
‘None of you? Is that it! Can we put it to a vote?’
‘Go right ahead!’
‘Enough yelling! Cut it out, big boss! You’re just getting on our nerves!!!’
‘You’re getting on your own nerves. Why don’t we leave it to your brigade leader to decide this? I see she’s sitting there and pondering. There’s no point in thinking up something bad, so she’s probably thinking up something sensible.’
‘I’m not going out to work!’
‘Not today! How about tomorrow?’
‘Are you trying to find something out?’
‘I’m not trying to find anything out, but I’m interested, because I feel bad for your brigade.’
‘Great! Look who’s our supporter!’
‘First you trample our brigade into the mud and now you come here to sort things out!’
‘I didn’t trample on you!’
‘What, are you against Shedvid?’
‘Too right, I am! That’s why I’m here. Let’s talk business instead of shouting at each other. You think Shedvid is wrong, is that it? Does that mean you’re right?’
‘Yes!!!’
‘And your strike? Your strike only gives Shedvid more ammunition and takes it from you. That’s just what she needs, a trump card, something to use against you. Well, let’s suppose Shedvid is in the wrong, she’s done something stupid; does that mean you should do something wrong?’
‘What, are you defending her?’
‘What are you trying to get from us?’
‘You’ve never understood us and never will.’
‘I paid for this photograph and article in Builders of BAM with my own health. I might just have been starting to believe in the impossible. I might just have been starting on the path of honest labour, of breaking with the past. That banner in the corner of our hut always reminded me that while I was working I was the equal of any other citizen. When I’m working, I’m not a criminal, because criminals don’t march under the red banner. It could only mean I was a Soviet citizen. The whole of BAM wanted to be like me, the head of the entire project set me as an example.’
There are not many people like Samokhvalova. And then along comes some stuck-up idiot and the banner is transferred to Budnikova. For what? For a single day’s work.
‘We held that banner for five months. That’s not red dye but our sweat and blood. She could have brought another one, and we might have won that one too. The snake! If she so much as shows her face, we’ll kill her.’
‘What difference does it make? Our lives are scarred.’
‘You need to get these thoughts out of your head. The more days you work, the more credits you will earn and the sooner you will be back home. Without today your release has been set back, and if you are not careful it may be put off even longer. Whose fault is that? I have come to join you in resolving your problem and an issue of importance to our state. You live in the USSR and have no plans to live anywhere else. Do you want to live in China?’
‘No!’
‘In Japan maybe, or Germany?’
‘Hell, no!’
‘Well, to live in the USSR you have to live by Soviet rules. Labour is a matter of honour, glory, valour, and heroism. He who does not toil, neither shall he eat. This is not something I have to persuade you of.
‘Tomorrow, go out to work to get that banner back, and I shall get another from our sectional HQ. You will earn that one too. Agreed?’
* Oskar Shedvid was overall head of the Third Section at BAM. See footnote on p.151 to 13 July 1936. The use of his name in this context is evidently intentional. [Tr.]