Grey Is the Color of Hope
Ratushinskaya, Irina
BOOK REVIEWS T n the opening scene of Irina Ratushinskaya's memoir, she is being taken to her husband's Kiev apartment in a KGB black Volga. Right away, we know we are dealing with a hardened...
...In 1986, on the eve of the Reykjavik summit, she was released, put on a plane, and flown to London...
...Miss Ratushinskaya is a Christian writer, whose technique consists in recording the most unbearable ordeals and shocking injustices, and following them up with positive messages...
...She composed her poems at work, over her sewing machine...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1989 39...
...And this is what will come before God . . . " The clarity and sincerity of the voice are not in doubt, yet one is curious: is her attitude natural or acquired...
...I n 1983 Miss Ratushinskaya, a 28year-old poet, was arrested by the Soviet authorities...
...He really leaves...
...She hardly mentions overcoming hatred, nor are there any references to the sort of catharsis that would lead to moral rebirth...
...Yes and no: nobody reads complaints per se, but if they turn into a flood, the camp authorities may be accused of "insufficient re-education effort...
...There, cold cells (9 degrees centigrade, or 48 degrees Fahrenheit) swarm with mice and woodlice...
...but the guards look the other way...
...One wishes ardently that it were this book's only value, that it were not also needed as a how-to manual on hunger strikes...
...My job here is much easier: to make your life here so miserable you'll never want to come back...
...But much harder to endure is the authorities' constant warfare against the zeks...
...The law provides for only three visits a year, and more are canceled than allowed...
...There were women with milk running down their breasts...
...She was charged with "anti-Soviet agitation" and sentenced to seven years of hard labor plus five years of exile...
...One child in eight died there...
...And they celebrate—religious holidays, ethnic ones, birthdays, New Year's Eve...
...What a goldmine two hours of allusions and suppressed feelings would be for a heated poetic imagination...
...She gratefully remembers Solzhenitsyn's advice in The Gulag Archipelago not to eat the fish, as it would cause unbearable thirst...
...I have already shown that concerns for her torturers' salvation looms large...
...she would write them out on narrow strips of rolling paper and hide them under the pile of gloves she was sewing.' Miss Ratushinskaya's poetry is copied and secretly passed throughout the camp...
...As for her fellow prisoners, she is frank about wanting to keep any shortcomings out of her picture of them: "I cannot lift my hand to relate uncharitable details about living people . . . who had to suffer prisons and camps...
...Is there any point in complaining...
...True...
...she writes, "you must not allow yourself to hate...
...The gulag is still in place, however, and the practical value of the book cannot be discounted...
...The latter, especially the GREY IS THE COLOR OF HOPE Irina Ratushinskaya/Alfred A. Knopf/$18.95 David Gurevich stem from the illusion, often found among dissidents, that the world is well informed of their struggle...
...On her way to the camp, she is put into a Stolypin (freight car) and issued her ration of bread and herring...
...She plays the Tchaikovsky First Concerto in her head, as she maintains a polite exchange with the KGB man: modern sculpture, Bulgakov, the anti-alcohol campaign...
...when full...
...All of this should have been caught by a competent (not just kompetentnyi) editor...
...singing psalms (prisoners have to pretend they're pop songs...
...Throughout the book, Miss Ratushinskaya walks a tightrope between saintliness and sanctimony...
...to the paper-thin prison uniform in the brutal Mordovian winter...
...they lower the temperature, knowing how crucial it is to a starving person...
...But is it any different in Soviet life outside the camps...
...Ivan's Day ritual that includes pouring water over yourself in the January cold...
...Podust (nicknamed "Ilse Koch," after the infamous SS guard at the Ravensbruck camp) explains: THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1989 37 force-feeding, is described in graphic detail: "They handcuff you, pry your jaws apart with an iron lever which crushes your teeth, shove .a tube down your throat and pour two liters of some kind of solution down it...
...Or something amusing: "laughter dissolves anger...
...This Herodian treatment in 1985—will glasnost ever reach those lower depths...
...And yet, even in the midst of this torment, she gets to notice the tear in the matron's eye, as the latter looks away to allow them the last-minute hug...
...And, just as politely, he declines...
...Again, Miss Ratushinskaya refuses to blame the individuals: "How could they gauge their strength—six large men—against my hunger-striking weight...
...To those of us who enjoy freedom outside the Small Zone, the book's flaws cannot overshadow its importance as a testimony to a triumph over cruelty and injustice...
...And what are sardelles, anyway—sardines from the Dardanelles...
...You will no longer be yourself, your identity will be destroyed, all that will remain will be a hysterical, maddened 'Several of these poems, translated without much finesse, are reproduced in the book, which never appeared in Russian...
...This leads to a concussion, and long-term neurological damage...
...Perhaps one day another dissident will be able to use it for the same hands-on advice that Miss Ratushinskaya got from Solzhenitsyn...
...Those less prone to take things on faith will want more details of her activities...
...But if you allow hatred to take root, it will flourish and spread during your years in the camps, and ultimately corrode and warp your soul...
...And, of course, they pray, they sing songs, and they (especially the author) recite poetry...
...It is a tough act, especially when viewed from the perspective of today's America, where Christian messages are daily compromised by cable TV preachers, and where a "positive attitude" is something associated more with corporate careers than with physical survival...
...I had to laugh over a horse named "Starlet," evoking an image of a neighing Hollywood blonde...
...It's not my job to prove to you that you are wrong...
...All this on 1,150 calories a day (normal consumption is about 3,000...
...When it is time to part, "this is no embrace, it is a spasm of pain...
...This figure is important, since your days begin with "dragging the bucket the length of the corridor, down ice-covered steps, and then across the snow to the cesspit and back...
...There, in a nutshell, are the main features of Miss Ratushinskaya's book: cool, unblinking tenacity, achieved through the 24-hour-a-day escape into the depths of her self...
...Her memoir, Grey Is the Color of Hope, covers in minute detail all that happened to her in these threeand-a-half years...
...C amp life is never boring...
...think about: it can be used as a survival manual, too...
...healing their wounds and celebrating their joys...
...Miss Ratushinskaya holds herself in control: "or I'll start howling my eyes out...
...to the routine of sewing seventy pairs of industrial gloves ("productive activity") per prisoner per day...
...Our heroine survives with a thousand clever ruses, smuggling "dietary supplements" such as bouillon cubes in rolls of cotton wool...
...Art is put to its original, most basic use: warming the hearts of fellow inmates, brutalized by life...
...Then they arrive, and it all comes true: the apartment, Mama, nieces, the husband is on his way, the family dog is leaping in the air...
...This is a side of a literary masterpiece that we seldom...
...Finally, she takes a militant stand against lesbianism, treating it as a social evil and a form of mental derangement...
...The strict linear format may be intentional, or it may David Gurevich, a New York writer, is the author of Travels with Dubinsky and Clive (Viking...
...When the guard triumphantly finds her out, all she has to say is, "May God forgive him . . . " In SHIZO, the author is exposed to "common" criminals who are often treated even more harshly: mothers are separated from their babies under the pretext of having no milk...
...The use of poetry is not the only area that will make skeptical readers cringe...
...They keep you chained for an hour afterward, so that you don't vomit...
...In a playful way, her fellow inmates use sweets to bribe her into writing more...
...An occasional point is won: skillywithout maggots, for example, or even an allowed family visit...
...Did she just happen to have a nature both stern and forgiving before embarking upon her torturous journey...
...Otherwise, the translation seems quite decent...
...To retain your faith...
...Russians have no word for "starlet," but in a Russian village, every other horse is named Zvezdochka, i.e., "Little Star"—light years away from Malibu...
...One need not be a pal of Andrea Dworkin to realize that prison . sex is little more than rape in the first place, and just happens to be of the homosexual variety...
...I don't have the education or the words for that...
...My guess is that the author had in mind sardelki, a Russian version of hot dogs...
...But if all else fails, she continues, compare your jailers to cockroaches, something to be destroyed without hatred, but rather with revulsion...
...and bedevilled husk of the human being that once was...
...Surely the phenomenon is more complicated than she imagines...
...Inmates fight back, returning the oversalted food and filing complaints...
...Common" criminals have no Helsinki Watch to send telegrams on their behalf...
...Alyona Kojevnikov's translation has a distinctly British flavor, with phrases like "Oh, but I'll lead you a dance...
...One might get used to the diet of skilly (watery gruel...
...The prize: two hours across the table, with the guard between the two of you to prevent touching or talking on a "security-related" subject...
...and, for toilet plumbing, a slop bucket that weighs 44 kilos (110 lbs...
...Let them really feel it,' is the motto of our captors...
...At another feast, each gets two spoonfuls of grated carrots, tea of rowanberries with three spoonfuls of sugar, black bread, and three pea-sized candies...
...So for now, she concentrates on the October scenery, the turning leaves, the buildings that went up while she was away...
...To silence her, the guards (who "are ashamed of what they're doing") throw her down, "head first against the wooden trestle...
...It seems 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1989 that in the camp, poetry returns to its roots: the poet "awakens kindness with the lyre," as Pushkin wrote over a hundred years ago...
...If all of this sounds a bit hokey, Miss Ratushinskaya brings it off admirably...
...Miss Ratushinskaya politely thanks the KGB man for the lift and offers him a cup of coffee...
...And later, dismayed at accusations of sadism: "I don't make you lick my boots as though you were common criminals...
...Later she lashes out against the police practice of using informers to solve crimes (she keeps politics out of it, and I will, too, to simplify the argument...
...Right away, we know we are dealing with a hardened zek ("prisoner," from the Russian zaklyuchennyi): she does not allow herself a speck of euphoria at being told she is released...
...As Lt...
...In the Mordovian camp of Barashevo, Miss Ratushinskaya finds herself, together with half a dozen other "politicals," in a tiny subdivision they call the "Small Zone," away from the "regular" criminals (the translator does not make it clear that zona is a standard Russian term for camp...
...The question is relevant, because on many occasions Miss Ratushinskaya sounds a tad naive about the big wide world, both in Russia and abroad...
...walking with their hair uncovered—and the battle rages on: inmates go on strike, or on hunger strike...
...if police could not use informers...
...From the beginning, Miss Ratushinskaya made a conscious decision to keep writing regardless of the conditions: to do otherwise would be to submit to authority...
...Miss Ratushinskaya does not attempt to place her experience in a historical context by cramming it with references to her predecessors, from Dostoevsky on...
...They pour love on their cat, Nyurka...
...even the guards treasure these little scraps of paper...
...not until the KGB man is gone...
...There is a joyful description of a St...
...For example, the authorities claim that inmates are entitled to a fixed ration of salt...
...But when one does come to pass, the whole barracks takes part preening you up, a ceremony described in the detail normally reserved for wedding preparations...
...Not because your tormentors have not earned it...
...If your husband is a human-rights activist, and you're a zek, this means you have to use code for just about everything...
...Not until she crosses the threshold of her home...
...due torthe cold, they would get inflammation of the mammary glands, while their babies lay crying in the House of Mother and Child...
...I would be curious to see what Miss Ratushinskaya would make of lesbian activists in Greenwich Village...
...This is quite a leap for the Christian ethic...
...Later, she advises that the inmate-reader try to find a speck of humanity in the jailer...
...She has reason to be apprehensive: only three- months earlier, the KGB staged a sham release, trying to get her to sign a clemency plea...
...Life in the Small, Zone is without physical comforts, which is to be expected in a camp...
...One may have qualms about a technique seemingly more suitable to hagiography, but the author's utter lack of hypocrisy forces us to accept it as a legitimate artistic choice...
...and an overwhelming Christian desire that God find something in her torturers' files to forgive them...
...How many crimes would be solved in the U.S...
...I n a sense, the author and her book 1 have more than one purpose: the above-quoted passage on hatred weds moral issues to practical ones in a sermon-like manner...
...Two liters of fluid pumped into a shrunken stomach causes terrible pains...
...Yet those willing to suspend doubt—the majority, I suspect—will find her concentrated, sometimes claustrophobic approach extremely effective...
...For example, at one point she says that "the worst thing in camps" is "perpetual lies...
...The zek's only weapon is publicity: she has to shout her head off, to let others know what is going on...
...Chronologically, Miss Ratushinskaya's memoir begins with the day she departs for the camp and ends with the homecoming: not a word of the events that led to the arrest...
...For the author's birthday, her friends bake a cake of margarine and biscuits, and use beet juice for coloring (by now it comes as no surprise to us that the guard gets a slice, too...
...It never seems to occur to her that this is a standard police technique, from Oslo to Lima...
...They manage to grow flowers in the stony soil (in a typical twist, they are not allowed to grow vegetables...
...The inmate is entitled to thirty-three grams of meat and forty-five grams of .fish a day .(cooked), but no weight scales are allowed, apparently with good reason...
...Thus every bit of food comes oversalted, which leads, in the absence of other nutrients, to body swelling...
...in that sense, she is preaching to the converted...
...But the poet stands back, and the hardened zek takes over...
...I hope that a few transgressions will be forgiven him, come Judgment Day, for declining this cup of coffee...
...More punishments follow, as inmates are taken to SHIZO (the Russian abbreviation for isolation cells...
...It is not surprising that the pris- oners grab every opportunity to escape this never-ending warfare...
...food is half a potato and a shred of cabbage in your skilly—every other day (on other days, it's justbread...
...as well as a few Russicisms that show through the context, like "personage" instead of "character," or "competent persons" (the Russian phrase kompetentnye litza implies jurisdiction, not competence...
...But more often, visits are canceled under any pretext—wearing a cross...
...The one memorable exception is Solzhenitsyn...
Vol. 22 • January 1989 • No. 1
