Word: vorkuta
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White Winter. Ten months of the year Vorkuta is blanketed by snow. El Campesino, the peasant general who fought for the Republicans in the Spanish civil war (one of the few people ever to have escaped from a Soviet prison camp), has described the storms which sweep over the Vorkuta during the winter: "The watch dogs of our guards sensed the approach of a snowstorm before we did; they began to howl and whine, and this would be the signal to start cutting holes into the frozen ground where there was no other shelter. One day a shift...
...Vagrants. Strangest of all the groups in the camps are the blatnye, the criminals, who take the best bunks, get the best food. "They belonged," wrote Dr. Scholmer, "to a tightly knit organization with rigid laws of its own which is to be found in every camp in Vorkuta. The organization is made up to a large extent of former besprizornye, the vagrant children who have been characteristic of the Soviet Union. I never once saw one so much as lay hands on a shovel. His companions would murder him if he did. The camp authorities put them officially into...
...Vorkuta, each camp is surrounded by a twelve-foot-high barbed-wire fence. Inside the fence is a prohibited zone within which the guards in the towers shoot at sight. There are powerful arc lamps every 10 or 15 yards along the wire and during the long hours of winter darkness the prohibited zone is as bright as day. Beyond the camp is the tundra, where guards sit in camouflaged dugouts scanning the undulating landscape with field glasses, and slow-flying biplanes circle looking for suspicious movement. The Komi receive a reward for every escaped prisoner they hand over...
There are compensations-of a kind. In the vast Soviet prison system, Vorkuta is classified as a "polar camp," which means that prisoners get better food. The daily ration includes 800 grams of bread and two warm dishes, usually oatmeal, thick soup or beans with fat. There is meat twice weekly, fish four times. Movies, usually Russian, are shown three times a month. Pravda is pasted on the wall...
After Stalin. On the camp loudspeakers, Vorkuta learned of Stalin's historic stroke. The religious knelt to pray. Others sang joyously. "A 'political expectation' spread through Vorkuta," says Konrad Michailowski, onetime major in the German 16th tank division, who arrived in the camp in 1950. "Everyone thought that Malenkov, whom they called 'Uncle Zhorka,' would change things. Things didn't change and Vorkuta became ripe for trouble...