The Secret Speech

  The guards were intent that he should never make it back to Moscow. They were protecting their fiefdom. Leo was a spy, hated by both sides—prisoners and guards alike, alone except for the commander, a man whose mind seemed warped by guilt. He was at best an unpredictable ally and no longer in control of the camp. Like wolves, the guards were circling the administration barracks, waiting for Leo to emerge.

  Looking around the room, his mind spinning through ideas, Leo saw the PA system on the desk. It was connected to speakers set up around the zona.

  —You can address the entire camp?

  —Yes.

  Leo stood up, taking the tin cup and filling it to the brim with the warm amber alcohol. He handed it to the commander:

  —Drink with me.

  —But—

  —Drink to the memory of my friend.

  The commander swallowed it in one gulp. Leo filled the cup again:

  —Drink to the memory of all who have died here.

  The commander nodded, finishing the cup. Leo filled it again:

  —And all those innocent deaths across our country.

  The commander tossed back the last of the spirit, wiping his lips. Leo pointed to the speaker:

  —Turn it on.

  SAME DAY

  IN THE MESS HALL, Lazar contemplated Leo’s decision to throw himself at the commander’s mercy. A recent convert to compassion, Zhores Sinyavksy might protect him. The other prisoners were furious at the prospect of justice being snatched from them. They’d already planned the third torture, the fourth, fifth—each man eagerly anticipating the night on which Leo would suffer as they’d suffered, when they would see in his face the pain they’d experienced and he’d cry out for mercy and they’d have the long-dreamed-of chance to say:

  No

  As for Leo’s story about his wife—Anisya—it nagged at him. But the vory in the barracks had assured him it was impossible that a woman who once sang hymns and cleaned and cooked could rise to lead her own gang. Leo was a liar. This time Lazar would not be fooled.

  Hissing static emitted from the outside PA speakers. Although nothing more than a background noise, their daily routine was so rigid and unchanging that Lazar flinched at this out-of-the-ordinary occurrence. Standing up, moving around the crowd of prisoners eating their breakfast, he opened the door.

  The speakers were set up on tall timber poles, one overhanging each of the prisoner barracks and one in the administration zone, positioned outside the kitchen and dining barracks. They were rarely used. A handful of curious prisoners gathered behind him, including Georgi, his voice, who never left his side. Their eyes fixed on the nearest lame speaker, battered by the winds, hanging crooked. A wire snaked around the pole, reaching the icy ground where it ran to the commander’s office. Static hissed again, modulating into the tinny voice of their commander. He sounded uncertain:

  —Special report…

  He paused, then began again, louder this time:

  —Special report to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Closed session. Twenty-five February 1956. By Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, First Secretary.

  Lazar descended the steps, walking toward the speaker. The guards had stopped what they were doing. After a moment’s confusion they whispered among themselves, evidently uninformed of the commander’s intention. A small group of them broke off, pacing to the administration barracks. Meanwhile the commander continued to read aloud. The more he read, the more agitated the guards became.

  —… What took place during the life of Stalin, who practiced brutal violence, not only toward everything which opposed him, but also toward that which seemed, to his capricious and despotic character, contrary to his concepts…

  Hurrying, the guards climbed the stairs, banging against the door, urgently calling out to the commander, trying to ascertain if he was acting under duress. One shouted out, with simple-minded earnestness:

  —Are you a hostage?

  The door remained shut. It didn’t sound to Lazar as if the commander were reading under duress. His voice was growing into the role:

  —Stalin created the concept Enemy of the People. The term made possible the use of the cruelest repression, violating all norms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who disagreed with Stalin…

  Lazar’s head angled upward toward the speaker, his mouth open in awe, as if a celestial miracle were being performed in the sky.

  The entire prison population abandoned their breakfast, or carried the bowl with them, gathering around the single speaker, a vast human knot, staring up, hypnotized by the crackling words. These were criticisms of the State. These were criticisms of Stalin. Lazar had never heard anything like them before, not in this form, words that weren’t muttered between two lovers, or by two prisoners across bunks. These words were from their leader, words that had been spoken aloud in Congress, transcribed and printed and bound, distributed to the farthest reaches of their country:

  —How is it that a person confesses to crimes that he has not committed? Only in one way: the application of torture, bringing him to a state of unconsciousness, deprivation of his judgment, taking away his human dignity…

  The man beside Lazar put an arm around him. The prisoner beside him did the same, and soon every prisoner was linked together, arm across shoulder.

  Lazar tried not to pay the guards any attention, concentrating on the speech, but he was distracted by their dilemma—they were grappling with the decision of whether to stop the commander from reading, or to stop the prisoners from listening. Deciding it was easier to deal with one man, rather than one thousand, they banged their fists against the door, ordering their commander to cease immediately. Intended to protect against arctic conditions, the door had been constructed out of thick logs. The small windows were fitted with shutters. There was no easy way in. Desperate, one guard fired his machine gun, bullets splintering uselessly up and down the wood. It didn’t open the door but it achieved the desired result. The reading stopped.

  Lazar felt the silence like a loss. He was not alone. Angry at having the speech cut short, prisoners to the left and right began to stamp their feet, quickly joined by others, by everyone, a thousand legs up and down, beating against the frozen ground:

  —More! More! More!

  The energy was irresistible. Before long his foot was also pounding the ground.

  LEO AND THE COMMANDER LISTENED to the commotion outside. Unable to risk opening the shutters, for fear of the guards shooting them, they couldn’t see what was going on. The vibrations from the stamping traveled through the floorboards. The sound of the chanting traveled through the thick walls:

  —More! More! More!

  Sinyavksy smiled, placing a hand to his chest, seeming to interpret their response as an affirmation of his reformed character.

  The mood in the camp was volatile, exactly as Leo desired. He gestured at the pages of the speech that he’d been hastily editing, condensing the document, compressing it to a series of shocking admissions. He handed the commander the next page. Sinyavksy shook his head:

  —No.

  Leo was taken aback:

  —Why stop now?

  —I want to give my own speech. I’ve been… inspired.

  —What are you going to say?

  Sinyavksy raised the speaker to his mouth, addressing Gulag 57:

  —My name is Zhores Sinyavksy. You know me as the commander of this Gulag where I have worked for many years. Those who arrived recently will think me a good man, fair and just and generous.

  Leo doubted that. However, he tried to appear convinced by these declarations. The commander was treating his speech with absolute seriousness.

  —Those who have been here longer will not think upon me so kindly. You have just listened to Khrushchev admitting mistakes made by the State, admitting Stalin’s acts of cruelty. I wish to follow the example of our leader. I wish to admit my own mistakes.

  Hearing the word—follow—Leo wondered i
f the commander was driven by guilt or by a life of unquestioning obedience. Was this redemption or imitation? If the State reverted to terror, could Sinyavksy return to brutality with the same suddenness that he’d embraced leniency?

  —I have done things of which I am not proud. It is time I asked for your forgiveness.

  Leo realized that the potency of his confession might be even greater than the admissions made by Khrushchev. The prisoners knew this man. They knew the prisoners that he’d killed. The chanting and stamping stopped. They were waiting for his confession.

  LAZAR NOTICED that even the guards were no longer trying to break down the door, waiting for the commander’s next words. After a pause, the tinny voice of Sinyavksy sounded out across the camp:

  —Arkhangelsk, my first posting: I was tasked with supervising prisoners working in the forest. They would cut down trees, readying the timber for transportation. I was new to the job. I was nervous. My orders were to collect a fixed amount of timber each month. Nothing else mattered. I had norms just like all of you. After the first week I discovered a prisoner had been cheating in order to fulfill his norm. Had I not caught him, my count would have been short and I would’ve been accused of sabotage. So you see… it was about survival, nothing else. I had no choice. I made an example of him. He was stripped naked, tied to a tree. It was summer. At sunset his body was black with mosquitoes. By the morning he was unconscious. By the third day he was dead. I ordered his body to remain in the forests as a warning. For twenty years, I didn’t think about that man. Recently, I think about him every day. I do not remember his name. I don’t know if I ever knew his name. I remember that he was the same age as me at the time. I was twenty-one years old.

  Lazar noted how the commander moderated honesty with qualifications:

  I had no choice.

  With those words thousands died, not with bullets but with perverse logic and careful reasoning. When Lazar returned his attention to the speech, the commander was no longer talking about his career in the forests of Arkhangelsk. He was discussing his promotion to the salt mines of Solikamsk:

  —In the salt mines, as an efficiency measure, I ordered men to sleep underground. By not moving the men up and down at the end of each shift, I saved thousands of precious work hours, benefiting our State.

  The prisoners shook their heads, imagining the conditions of that underground hell:

  —My purpose was to discover new ways of bringing benefit to our State! What could I say? Had I not thought of this, my junior officer might have proposed it and I would’ve been punished. Did these men need daylight more than the State needed salt? Who had the authority to make that argument? Who dared to speak up for them?

  One of the guards, a man Lazar had never seen before, strode toward them, brandishing a knife. They were going to cut the wire and kill the speech. The guard was smiling, pleased with his solution:

  —Out of my way.

  The foremost prisoner stepped forward, standing on the wire, blocking the guard. A second prisoner joined him, and a third, a fourth, keeping the wire out of reach. Smiling threateningly, as if to say he would remember this for later, the guard moved to another exposed stretch of wire. Responding, the prisoners quickly pushed forward, filling the space, protecting the wire. The knot of prisoners reshaped until there was a dense line of prisoners standing side by side stretching from the timber pole supporting the speaker to the base of the administration barracks. The only way the guard could get to the wire was by crawling under the barracks, something his pride stopped him from doing.

  —Get out of my way.

  The prisoners didn’t move. The guard turned to face the two vakhta, the fortified towers overlooking the camp. He waved at the gunners, pointing toward the prisoners before hurrying away.

  There was a burst of gunfire. In unison the prisoners dropped to their knees. Lazar looked around, expecting to see dead and injured. No one seemed to be hurt. The volley must have been targeted over their heads, hitting the side of the barracks, a warning shot. Slowly everyone stood up. Voices from the back cried out:

  —We need help!

  —Bring the feldsher!

  Out of sight, Lazar couldn’t see what was going on. The calls for medical assistance continued. But no one came. The guards did nothing. Soon the cries stopped—there were no more calls for help. Explanations rippled through the crowd. A prisoner had died.

  Sensing the mood darken, the guard put away his knife and drew his gun. He fired at the speaker, missing several times, until finally it sparked and crackled, falling silent. The other four speakers in the prisoner zone were still working, but they were some distance away: the commander’s voice reduced to an inaudible background sound. Keeping his gun drawn, the guard announced:

  —Back to the barracks! And no one else will die!

  The threat was misjudged.

  Picking up the wire from the ground, a prisoner darted forward, wrapping it around the guard’s neck, throttling him. The prisoners surrounded the fight. Other guards ran to intervene. A prisoner grabbed the officer’s gun, firing at the approaching guards. One man fell, wounded. The others drew their weapons, firing at will.

  The prisoners scattered. An understanding flashed through them instantaneously. If the guards regained control, the reprisals would be savage, no matter what speeches were being given in Moscow. At this point, both towers opened fire.

  THE COMMANDER WAS STILL TALKING, recounting bloody confession after bloody confession, seemingly oblivious to the gunfire. His mind had snapped: under Stalin his character had been pulled with such extreme force in one direction. Now he was being pulled in the exact opposite direction. He had no resistance, no idea who he really was, neither a good man nor a bad man but a weak one.

  Allowing the commander to carry on, Leo opened the shutter, cautiously looking out. Rioting prisoners were running in every direction. There were bodies on the snow. Calculating the forces on both sides, Leo guessed a ratio of one guard for every forty inmates, a high ratio, in part explaining why the camps were so expensive to run—the forced labor failing to earn back the cost of keeping the convicts fed, housed, transported, and enslaved. A central expense was the guards, paid a premium for working in such remote conditions. This was the reason they were killing to cling on to authority. They had no lives to go back to, no families or neighborhoods that wanted them. No factory floor community would accept them. Their prosperity depended upon the prisoners. The fight would be equally desperate on both sides.

  There was a flash of gunfire from the towers—the window shattered. Leo dropped, glass falling around him, bullets hitting the floor-boards. Safe behind the thick log walls, he slowly reached up, trying to close the shutters. The wood broke apart in a shower of splinters. The room was exposed. On the desk the PA equipment, kicked around by the bullets, was lifted up, spinning in the air before clattering to the floor. Sinyavksy fell back, curling into a ball. Over the noise Leo cried out:

  —Do you have a gun?

  Sinyavksy’s eyes flicked to the side. Leo followed them to a wood crate tucked in the corner, padlocked. He stood up, running toward it, only to find the commander running to block him, putting his hands up:

  —No!

  Leo knocked the commander aside, picking up the steel desk lamp and bringing the heavy base crashing down against the lock. With a second blow the lock smashed off and he pulled it free. The commander once again leapt forward, throwing himself over the crate:

  —I beg you…

  Leo pulled him off, opening the lid.

  Inside there was nothing more than a collection of odds and ends. There were framed photos. They showed the commander standing proudly beside a canal: emaciated prisoners toiled in the background. Leo guessed they were the photos that had originally hung on the office wall. He tossed them aside, rooting through files, certificates, awards, and letters congratulating Sinyavksy on meeting a quota—the detritus of his great career. There was a hunting rifle at the bottom. On the h
andle were notches, twenty-three kills. Certain that these notches didn’t refer to wolves or bears, Leo loaded the rifle with the fat, finger-length bullets, moving back to the window.

  The two primary towers, the vakhta, were strategically crucial, constructed on high wooden stilts. The guards had already pulled up the ladders, making it impossible to scale their positions. Protected behind thick log walls, the top of each tower housed podium-mounted machine guns capable of firing hundreds of rounds a minute, a collective firepower far greater than anything on the ground. Leo had to draw their fire away from the prisoners. He took aim at the guard tower directly ahead. There was little chance his shot would be accurate enough to penetrate the gap in the log walls. He fired twice, shuddering under the massive recoil of the rifle. They stopped firing at the prisoners, redirecting their volley of bullets at him.

  Ducking down, crouched against the floor, Leo glanced at Sinyavksy. He was in the corner, reading the remaining pages of the Secret Speech, calmly, as if nothing were amiss while his office was torn apart by gunfire. He looked up at Leo, reading:

  —Let my cry of horror reach your ears: do not remain deaf, take me under your protection; please, help remove the nightmare of interrogations and show that this is all a mistake!

  Sinyavksy stood up:

  —This is all a terrible mistake! This should never have happened!

  Leo shouted at him:

  —Get down!

  A bullet hit the commander in the shoulder. Unable to watch him die, Leo jumped up, knocking him flat. Landing on his injured knees, Leo almost passed out with the pain. Sinyavksy whispered:

  —That speech has saved my life.

  Leo smelled smoke. He rolled onto his back, taking the pressure off his knees. He stood up awkwardly, moving to the window. There was no more heavy gunfire. Through the smashed window he cautiously surveyed the zona and saw the source of the smoke. Directly underneath the base of the cabin was a fire, flames climbing the structure. Barrels of fuel had been rolled underneath and set alight, the cabin roasting like a chunk of meat at the end of a skewer. For the men inside there was no escape. Unable to climb down the ladder, the guards tried to squeeze out through the gap in the log walls. The gap was too narrow: one man was stuck, wedged in, unable to go forward or back as the fire took hold. He began to scream.