The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (15 page)

me where a stadium had been

planned, but never built. Three stray

dogs watched us as we walked past.

That evening, I sat with Father

Dmitry’s writings and looked up

more references to his time here and

how he got on in the camps. His

camp’s hospital became – as for

Karsavin – a meeting place for the

religious

believers,

and

Father

Dmitry went there often.

‘The priest whom I met was a

real treasure for me. He was attentive

by nature and soon he got a job for

another priest in the hospital. After a

hard day’s work, I would go to him,

after roll call, and we would talk

about everything.’

They celebrated Easter in the

infirmary, with the service led by the

priest who worked there.

‘We took communion, and I

sensed an extraordinary joy. We

separated then, when it was already

getting light, and the camp was

plunged into a strong, twilight

dream.’

One time he described how he

and a Ukrainian nursed a Lithuanian

back to life. Another time he

described how a Spaniard – it is not

clear what he was doing in the camp

– said all Russians love slavery, and

then escaped.

‘They caught him, shot him and

left him there on the watchtower so

all the prisoners could see.’

Father Dmitry was always a

compulsive writer. Despite having

been imprisoned for writing poems,

he kept writing them. He hid his

p o em s in an old suitcase, but no

hiding place was safe in the camps.

Guards found the stash of poems

during a search.

‘We are arresting you,’ he was

told.

‘What? Have I not already been

under arrest for six years?’

‘That’s nothing, we’re arresting

you anyway.’

He was kept in a prison cell

where a harsh light shone into his

eyes at all times. Most of his fellow

prisoners were there for murder or

attempted murder.

‘A

Lithuanian

who

killed

informers was young, eighteen years

old, tall, thin, spoke with a bass

voice. He knew he was not long for

this world, he had tuberculosis, and

he wanted to kill as many evil people

as he could before he died. He was

kind, he was a believer, he missed

his Lithuania, and was not as evil as

a murderer should be.’

The prisoners were not allowed

to go out or to lie down during the

day so they took turns telling each

other everything they knew. They

loved to talk about murder and rape,

using the ferociously obscene and

all-but-incomprehensible jargon of

Russian prisons. Father Dmitry

asked

to

be

put

in

solitary

confinement to escape them, but

nothing came of it.

Every now and then he would be

summoned for interrogation, when

his investigator would also swear at

him. But these insults about his

poems, some of which criticized

Stalin, came as a relief after the

conversation of his comrades.

‘How could you allow yourself

to commit such slander? The name

of Stalin is spoken with gratitude in

China, across the whole world, he is

the leader of humanity, and you call

him a butcher,’ his investigator

shouted,

according

to

Father

Dmitry’s later account. ‘Just think

what you look like. You’re like

Christ when he was on the cross.

You have no blood in your face,

you’re a skeleton, and you will die

here if you don’t repent. Admit

everything. Tell me you’re guilty.’

Father Dmitry admitted nothing,

even when they brought in new

investigators to increase the pressure

on him, or when they brought in

friends who had been twisted into

accusing him of organizing a revolt

in the camp.

‘What do I have to fear? I am not

some criminal, these are my beliefs,’

he told them.

When the court case came he

expected the worst: execution or a

new term of twenty-five years as a

minimum. When he received a mere

ten years on top of his existing

sentence, he was surprised. He had

already been inside for six years,

now he would have another decade

to learn how a Soviet citizen should

behave.

Tanya, the sister-in-law of my friend

in Moscow, had instructed me to

bring a packed lunch for our trip to

Abez the next day. So, in the

minutes before they came to collect

me,

I

made

egg

mayonnaise

sandwiches. Lacking a kitchen I fell

back on one of the cooking

techniques I had learned as a student.

I took the lid off the electric kettle

and hoped the fuse would hold out

long enough to boil some eggs.

Tanya was a pianist, and an Inta

native. We sat on the train, if you

can call a single carriage pulled by

an engine a train, and she told me

about her teacher: Olga Achkasova.

Achkasova’s parents moved to

Germany when she was a child, and

she married a German before World

War Two. She survived the Nazi

period without being arrested, but

fell foul of Berlin’s communist

liberators. When she saw the first

Soviet soldiers, she welcomed them

in Russian. They arrested her, tried

her and sent her off to the north.

We sat around a table: Tanya,

Nikolai Andreyevich, a local hunter

and

me.

Nikolai

Andreyevich

fetched out his map and used the

opportunity to ask the hunter if he

knew any gulag burial sites that were

not marked. Since retiring, he has

studied the gulag system and tried to

create a database of the prisoners’

final resting places. Most of the

camps were closed after Stalin’s

death and their buildings have

vanished into the swamps, which

makes finding them now all but

impossible. In a way, an alternative

future for Russia is buried with them

out there in the tundra. Almost all

the brightest people from every

industry and every town served time

in the gulag, and many of them died.

Those who survived learned habits

of obedience the country has never

shaken off, while those who were

not imprisoned – and who were thus

complicit either in locking them up

or in profiting from their labour –

prefer not to talk about it. Amnesia

and sullen obedience are two of the

crucial characteristics of modern

Russian politics, and who can say

how the country would have

developed had these camps never

existed?

Nikolai Andreyevich is one of a

tiny number of Russians who want

to reveal that shameful past, and

hunters are a crucial source for him.

They have often seen these old

graveyards, and this man traced the

line of the rivers with his finger,

suggesting sites for him to check.

By 1948, the year of Father

Dmitry’s

arrival,

the

railway

headquarters was at Abez, where the

central hospital stood and where the

weaker prisoners like Karsavin were

concentrated. The first prisoners to

build the railway voyaged up the

rivers by barge, along with the rails

and sleepers. The main camps

therefore sat where the line crossed a

river.

Nikolai Andreyevich was one of

those rare people in Inta who had

not sprung from the gulag. He had

come here voluntarily from Ukraine.

Perhaps because the gulag’s history

was not personal to him, he had

become fascinated by it.

‘I love history. I read all the time.

I worked in the Young Communist

League, the party. In the army I was

the political worker. And then I

came to the north in 1978. Then in

the 1980s, the papers started to print

memoirs, there was new openness.

We knew there had been camps, but

you could not talk about it,’ he said.

‘I collected these writings like a

book lover.’

His interest had become all-

consuming. He now takes children

on trips to hunt for graveyards, and

erects crosses on the graves he finds.

‘We put a cross as a memorial

mark. We take two birch trees, take

the bark off them, and then we chop

down all other trees for 20 metres

around so it is visible. In this sense

the cross is a symbol. It is a symbol

of the suffering these people went

through. They all suffered, whether

they were criminals or political

prisoners,’ he said.

Tanya was on a similar mission.

Karsavin had inspired her to such an

extent that she had decided to

organize for a monument to stand on

his grave. For her, this trip was both

a pilgrimage and a reconnaissance.

As our train crawled through the

tundra, Nikolai Andreyevich pointed

out the sites of the vanished gulag

world. ‘There was a hospital, and

where the trees are is a graveyard,

you see. There was a woman’s camp

there, and they lived up on that rise.

See there that river, there was a camp

there as well.’

The tundra opened as we

approached the bridge, affording us

our first view since we had left Inta.

Grass and weeds lined the banks.

The Ural Mountains, humped and

smooth and white-flecked like killer

whales, rose in the distance.

‘There, wait, wait, wait, there in

that pier of the bridge, there’s a

body. The criminals cemented in a

comrade of theirs, just there,’

Nikolai Andreyevich said.

The trees closed around us once

more. They were scrubby birches,

with the spiky silhouettes of conifers

on the horizon.

‘Abez’, Nikolai Andreyevich

told me, ‘is within seven kilometres

of the Arctic Circle, so you can

pretty much say we’re now in the

Arctic.’

We crossed the River Usa on a

long clanking steel-framed bridge,

and halted on the far side. A dozen

people alighted: hunters, railway

workers and us, carrying our packed

lunches. A bearded man in thick

glasses and camouflage greeted us.

This was Alexander Merzlikin, a

local with a piercing, thoughtful air,

who keeps a watch over the

graveyards when he is not out

hunting in the wilds.

We walked over the stagnant

pools of the marsh along a raised

path of planks. Heather rose around

us, and green scum rimmed the

pools. Hundreds of mosquitoes

swarmed up, nosing on to our arms

and ankles, nestling in our hair.

‘Wait until you get to the

graveyard,’

said

Alexander,

sardonically. He was smoking. ‘This

is nothing.’

We dropped off our bags of

lunch at the school, and donned hats

he gave us. Made of nylon with a

wide brim, they were screened to

keep the mosquitoes off our faces. I

put on my cagoule, buttoned the

sleeves tight and tucked my trousers

into my socks. My only bare flesh

was my hands, and I could police

them with ease. I was safe from the

swarm, I thought.

Abez was a neat collection of

houses

around

the

two-storey

buildings of an apartment block and

the school. A gaggle of children

cycled between the houses, clad only

in shorts and T-shirts. I felt rather

overdressed in my mosquito armour,

but the insects’ hum as they hunted a

weak point was constant and I was

grateful for the protection.

‘There were 1,500 people living

here before,’ said Merzlikin. I was

hearing that word ‘before’ a lot. It

means ‘before the end of the Soviet

Union’. ‘Now there are 400. The