custody.
The group consisted mainly of those convicted of petty crimes or workplace transgressions, 1 with a few hard cases thrown in—pitiful creatures who had suffered a common fate: parents executed or killed in the war; NKVD orphanages; escape to the streets, poverty, and hunger until at some point they were picked up for pilfering a potato or a carrot from a shop counter. Branded as criminals, rejected by society, they soon turned into the genuine article. Among them there were some recidivists, hardened criminals who in camp slang were called zhuchki, “bugs.” Now here they all were, planted in front of the town hall, bickering with one another, rifling through their bundles and pestering their guards for cigarettes.
The camp authorities had tossed another ingredient into this hash of ruined lives: three political prisoners convicted under Article 58. 2 One was an older woman, the wife of a disgraced diplomat; the second was a middle-aged seamstress; the third was a student from Leningrad. 3 None had any record of defying or disrupting camp discipline—it was just that the punishment brigade was thrown together in a hurry and the number of troublemakers did not meet the quota set out in the directive. So in order to make the required head count, the authorities had included some “heavyweights”: inmates who had been sentenced to twenty-five years.
“Women in Bugurchan!” The news spread like wildfire throughout the taiga, stirring the area up like an anthill. Within an hour men began flocking to the town hall—first the locals, then men from farther afield, some on foot, some on motorbikes. There were fishermen, geologists, fur trappers, a team of miners and their Party boss, and even some convicts, thieves and criminals who had bolted from their logging camp. As the men began to arrive, the zhuchki began to stir, buzzing, trading barbs—brassy prison slang heavily laced with obscenities.
The guard detail bellowed at the zhuchki to stay where they were and ordered the others to keep their distance; somewhere in the shouting was a threat that the militia had both dogs and firearms at their disposal and were ready to use them, but since almost all the men knew their way around the camps, they didn’t push their luck (all the more so because someone had already sweetened the guards’ mood with liquor). The guards didn’t bother to chase them off completely, just yelled at their retreating backs, and settled themselves nearby.
The zhuchki were cadging loose tobacco and tea for brewing chifir; 4 they offered homemade tobacco pouches in trade. Most of the men had already stocked up on supplies either at home or the village store. Over the women’s heads, into the crowd, flew packs of cigarettes and packets of tea, chunks of bread, cans of food. Tossing a crust of bread to a famished prisoner was an act that suggested political unreliability, a punishable act if committed back there, in long-suffering Mother Russia; there one was supposed to patriotically lower one’s eyes, walk on by, and forget. But here—perhaps because almost all the local men had a prison past—a different law prevailed. A group of fish salters and the one and only cooper in the village (already fairly drunk) had brought a parcel of cured salmon and proceeded to cut it up and toss the pieces to the female prisoners.
Worn down by seasickness and two hungry days in the hold, the women caught these handouts on the fly, hurriedly stuffed them into their mouths and swallowed without chewing. The zhuchki, coughing hoarsely, took long drags on their Belomors. 5 For a time, all was quiet. Then bottles began to clink, and several of the men, as if on command, retreated to one side and sat down to drink with the guard detail.
Sated, the women struck up a song, first “The Long Road,” then “Sister,” and the men replied with the famous camp song “Tsentralka.” 6 After this group sing everyone perked up and began to mingle with no