Strikes in the Russian Camps
Barton, Paul
The strikes that have shaken the entire Soviet concentrationary system during the past few years are a new phenomenon, and yet, in certain respects, they recall the phase of the...
...Moreover, only a very small minority of the non-criminal prisoners were political prisoners in the strict sense of the term...
...At Camp 5 of Norilsk, where an important strike was to break out on May 7, 1953, about a score of Ukrainians who had been transferred to Norilsk after the disturbances at Karaganda won the leadership of the political prisoners by killing four convicts who were known to be administration stool-pigeons...
...He describes this experience in a work which he is now preparing...
...More or less organized groups, which are beginning to act in systematic fashion, are being formed among the political prisoners...
...However, they did not think of going on strike themselves...
...The special rights of the political prisoners were withdrawn and certain privileges were granted to the "common-laws...
...The conscious and systematic action of the political prisoners, particularly of their leaders, is largely responsible...
...It appears, in the light of recent testimonies, that since 1950 or thereabouts, the Soviet government's attitude towards prisoners in concentration camps has changed radically...
...After a rapid investigation, they were sent to an abandoned brick-works about twenty miles away which thus became a kind of death-isolator...
...Paul Barton, a European socialist journalist who specializes in problems of concentration camps behind the Iron Curtain...
...The newcomers immediately set about changing the situation...
...Imprisonment in "isolators" became the severest form of detention...
...However, the chief characteristics of the "regime camps" at the present time are not due solely to the reform of 1949...
...This fact, which was brought out by Joseph Scholmer in his book Vorkuta: the Story of a Slave City in the Soviet Arctic, is confirmed by all the other witnesses, European and Japanese alike...
...According to him, the rehabilitation of the "murderers in white"—the Kremlin physicians who had been accused, before the death of Stalin, of murdering several dignitaries at the order of "world Zionism"—dealt a terrible blow to the prestige of the regime and of its local representatives...
...Spontaneous though they might have been, they were led very firmly by secret committees which were unknown to the strikers themselves...
...The crisis lasted three and a half months, but at the end of one and a half or two months, the strikers could no longer resist artificial feeding, and only about forty of them held out to the end...
...Until then, it was completely uninterested in camp mortality rates, which were almost unimaginably high, and simply replaced the dead by additional mass shipments...
...This attitude is no longer to be found except among the primitive peoples of the outlying regions...
...We have also received specific information about a threeday work stoppage at the Taichet camp in January 1955, a strike at Kirguin (Kazakstan) in the summer of 1954 and another strike at Vorkuta last autumn...
...It is also rather interesting that these young men were offended when the guards referred to them as partisans of Bendera, former head of the fascist-minded anti-Semitic group in the UPA...
...According to these witnesses, the critical moment in the life of Camp 13 of Taichet occurred on May 5, 1954, when fifteen Ukrainians who had helped organize the Norilsk strikes were transferred to this camp...
...The strikes that have shaken the entire Soviet concentrationary system during the past few years are a new phenomenon, and yet, in certain respects, they recall the phase of the development of the camps that came to an end in 1935-6...
...They obviously did not know what to do...
...In several places, these partisans were among the chief strike organizers...
...This tragic event was described by Boris Podolak, an eye-witness (see The Regime of the Concentration Camp in the Post-war World, cicxc, Paris, 1955...
...In the course of the reorganization of the camps in 1948-9, all prisoners were assigned to camps of various categories, the most important of which were the "special regime camps" for political prisoners, and the ILT's (Ispravitelnotroudovoi Laguer — corrective labor camp) for the majority of the criminals...
...The strike in question lasted forty days...
...They constitute one of the best organized groups among the political prisoners, and they are eager for action...
...The necessary preliminary condition seems to have been the breaking-up by the political prisoners of the power that until then had been exercised by the commonlaw criminals...
...However, their power had no solid basis, as their number was limited...
...The strikes of our time are the work of pariahs who are barely beginning to emerge from the totalitarian imbroglio...
...What we have just indicated is not a pure hypothesis...
...It is not quite clear how the strike...
...Thus, the last vestiges of the political struggle within the Soviet concentrationary world were swept away...
...One seeks in vain any open condemnation of the Soviet regime, though there can be no doubt as to the hostility that is felt towards it...
...It was the elite of the October Revolution that was killed off in the 1930s...
...I42...
...It appears that by the end of February 1938 it contained seven hundred prisoners...
...All statements concerning the behaviour of the free workers during the strikes are categorical about this matter...
...THERE is every reason to believe that the free population's attitude towards the prisoners has undergone a fundamental transformation during the past few years...
...After the first news of the Vorkuta strike of the summer of 1953, almost each new return to the West of former prisoners has brought additional information...
...From 1936 until a short time ago, the situation was the reverse...
...The epilogue of this drama occurred in the autumn of 1937, when a special commission arrived at Vorkuta from Moscow...
...In a declaration addressed to the internal police of the NKVD, in which they announced the hunger strike and stated their demands, the Stalinist system was condemned as a ruthless fascist regime...
...But, despite everything, the revolt is carried forward by the great mass of the prisoners...
...On the initiative of a rather large and well organized group of Trotskyists, and with the participation of other political groups, four hundred prisoners remained lying in their bunks and refused to go to work...
...Thus, the "commonlaws" continued to dominate the prisoners in general...
...However, their sense of uncertainty was surely not the only factor that kept them from indulging in slaughter...
...It is true that the men who lead the strikes have to maneuver carefully to prevent defections...
...In order to indicate their political tendency, these men, all of whom are very young, simply introduced themselves as Ukrainian nationalists...
...The hesitation of the camp authorities is partly explained by the uncertainty that seems to have prevailed in the entire police force since the spring of 1953...
...It will be recalled that political prisoners— or at least those who had been involved in communist opposition groups—had formerly enjoyed certain advantages over common-law criminals and taken advantage of them to carry on intense political activity in the camps that were set up specially for privileged political prisoners...
...It continued operating for years, but the armed forces of the government finally succeeded in destroying the bulk of its troops...
...They displayed persistent hostility towards the Great Russians...
...There has also been mention of strikes at Magadan, Mouika (on Sakhalin Island) and elsewhere...
...They themselves set an example...
...During these strikes, a black flag waved over the camps...
...Many other prisoners expressed their sympathy with the strikers without taking part in the strike...
...A SIMILAR battle took place between the true political prisoners and the administration's informers who were planted among the convicts...
...The two rebellions were separated by a veritable abyss, which becomes ap parent when one studies the political nature of each...
...They also went about systematically "expropriating" those who were rich—a term they used because of its association with the Russian revolutionary movement...
...The authorities concentrated particularly on the problem of the high mortality rate...
...A testimony on the strike that broke out in the Kirguin camp in the summer of 1954, an account of which is contained in the Social Democrat Sotsialistitcheski Vestnik of July-August 1955, shows very clearly how a camp administration can be taken by surprise, can give the order to fire upon prisoners without first contacting the Gulag and Moscow, and then, fearing possible administrative sanctions, can scheme and maneuver so as to avoid, until the last minute, having to inform Moscow of what has happened...
...News of the strikes that have broken out in several Soviet concentration camps demonstrates that this period is over and that political life has begun again with unprecedented vigor: It is not yet possible to give a clear picture of these strikes...
...WHAT Is perhaps the most interesting though the least clear problem is that raised by the role of the Ukrainian partisans...
...E.D...
...the camp administrators themselves were badly shaken...
...In addition, their political thinking is unquestionably less articulate than that of the victims of 1936...
...From the changes that have since taken place in the running of the camps we have reason to believe that camp administrators were instructed to keep the rates down at any cost and that they were strictly supervised in regard to this matter...
...According to Karl Fischer, the chief activities of these men in the camps and prisons were directed towards destroying the dictatorship of the criminals, clearing out the administration spies and resisting the influence of the incorrigible Stalinists...
...At Norilsk and Taichet, for example, it was they who prepared and led the action...
...The testimonies that have been collected, both western and Asiatic, seem to establish the existence of an organizing center for each of the strikes that we know about...
...leaders managed to overcome this obstacle...
...Melvin Tumin, author of an anthropological study of Indian life in Guatemala and sociological studies...
...For example, according to the Japanese testimonies, the strike in Camp 5 of Norilsk went through a difficult moment when the authorities announced that an additional three-year term would be added to everyone's sentence if the disorders were not ended...
...They are less concerned with general problems than with their immediate interests...
...The observations of the repatriated Japanese, as gathered and recorded by Herbert Passin, are particularly revealing in this connection...
...The events at Karaganda, which date from the autumn of 1952, seem to have marked the beginning of this critical phase in the existence of the camps...
...Their first objective is to break up the dictatorship of the criminals and to win influence over the entire body of the so-called political prisoners...
...It is this that gives these enterprises their genuine character of acts that are both organized and spontaneous...
...In the statement of demands drawn up by the present-day strikers, there is no declaration concerning general political questions...
...Between that strike and the one fill that broke out in Vorkuta and other camps seventeen years later there was not only the long period of silence...
...One of the witnesses heard by the cicuc investigators, Karl Fischer, the Austrian socialist, had an opportunity to speak at great length with these former Ukrainian partisans during his confinement in the central prison of Alexandrovsk...
...This act was sufficient to weaken the administration's control of the camp and to impress the prisoners with the force represented by the Ukrainian nucleus...
...Most of the UPA veterans are now in concentration camps throughout the Soviet Union...
...As in the period ending in 1935-6, political prisoners in the camps are no longer subjected to the dictatorship of the "common-laws...
...IN ORDER to understand the recent strikes, we must bear in mind certain facts...
...However, it seems that their refusal to negotiate with the local officials and their demand to be put into contact with representatives of the highest authorities were instrumental in this respect...
...camps themselves came to resemble extermination camps...
...The entire political life of the camps was thus swept away...
...The NOTE: Condensed and reprinted with permission from the Information Bulletin (Number 4) of the Centre Internationald'Edition et de Documentation (C.I...
...Others turned their backs on them...
...Conditions in the regime camps are much more severe than those in the ITL's...
...They tried to maneuver rather than massacre...
...This unsettling of authority occurred not only in the minds of the prisoners...
...Among New Contributors: Ramon Sender, the distinguished Spanish novelist, now living in the U.S., author of Seven Red Sundays .. . Saul Gottlieb, a young writer who lives in New Orleans and has contributed to Commentary and other journals...
...Furthermore, the prisoners who were sent to the camps in the late 1930's no longer came, for the most part, from the ranks of the opposition, but were officials and experts of the regime itself...
...In Grenzen der Sowjetmacht (Holzner Verlag, Wurzburg, 1955), Wilhelm Starlinger sums up his observations on the Potma camp...
...The majority were innocent people, victims of arbitrary police action, such as the kulaks, the Stalinists who were eliminated during the great purge trials, the members of suppressed national groups, etc...
...Up to that time, the latter camp had been dominated by a commonlaw prisoner...
...As Karl Fischer puts it, their conduct was such that it could serve as a model...
...The satisfaction which they obtained increased considerably each prisoner's self-confidence...
...The death-rate was very high...
...In the words of the report, "The camp had been under the control of one of the criminal prisoners, but the Ukrainians organized the camp against him and one night gave him such a thorough beating that he was taken to the hospital and never showed up in Camp 13 again...
...The strike-leaders were arrested, along with a mass of other prisoners, and were crowded into a barrack that had been transformed into a prison...
...There is even talk, though without adequate proof, of an insurrection in a northern camp as early as 1948...
...Nevertheless, the reform has greatly eased the situation of political prisoners...
...But this hostility was subordinated to their chief purpose, which was to create solidarity among all the prisoners, whoever they might be...
...Stuart Hampshire, well-known English philosopher, author of a study on Spinoza...
...Any attempt at resistance was nipped in the bud, owing to the terror practised by the administration, on the one hand, and by the "common-laws," on the other...
...Nevertheless, the fact remains that these strikes could not have assumed the proportions they did if the action of the leaders had not found a favorable climate among the rank and file of the camps...
...We know with certainty that before the Vorkuta outbreak there was a tremendous disruption in the Norilsk con centrationary complex and that there was an even earlier explosion of the same kind at Karaganda...
...The first mass executions began on the night of May 8th to 9th...
...The sorting-out that took place, aft• er the weakening of the criminals' position, between the so-called and the true political prisoners, was manifested by the way in which the strikes were led...
...Though it has not restored their pre-1936 privileged regime, it has freed them from the nightmare of the dictatorship of the "common-laws...
...Some of their fellow-prisoners, though sympathizing with them, continued nevertheless to report for work...
...At present, a new feature appears in the situation...
...However, in the movement that is shaking the camps at the present time, the strike breakers are only a handful of men...
...Here too the Japanese testimonies provide illuminating information...
...It appears that the strike committees were obliged, at least in certain places, to act in such a way as not only to ensure the success of the strike, but also to overcome the fears of the mass of prisoners...
...The written demands submitted by these committees to the representatives of the authorities came to the attention of the strikers only gradually...
...In general, there are no longer signs of the ignoble conduct described by Elinor Lipper, Jerry Gliksman and others who relate how, when they were dying of thirst during the endless transport, peasants offered to sell them water at fantastic prices...
...When the hunger strike was launched in 1937, the four hundred rebels were alone in their agony, and their number dwindled from day to day...
...However, it had to abandon this policy of exterminating prisoners when the supply of recruits began running low...
...The food, clothing, living conditions and health and medical services began to improve perceptibly...
...An important aspect of the strike situation was the attitude of the authorities...
...They were sympathetic towards the strikers and tried almost everywhere to manifest their solidarity with them...
...L. D. Reddick, professor of History at Alabama State College, Montgomery, has made surveys of race relations in North and West, has worked in South for past eight years...
...published in Paris...
...As is generally known, a strong secret army, the UPA, was formed in the Ukraine during the war and fought first against the German and then against the Soviet troops...
...The reform of 1949 did not completely eliminate criminals from the "regime camps...
...This flag was the symbol of the anarchist peasant partisans of Nestor Makhno who had won a legendary glory fighting in the Southern Ukraine against the Austro-German occupants and the Cossack chief Skoropadsky until the end of 1918, against the nationalist government of Simeon Petliura until February 1919, against the white troops of General Denikin until the autumn of 1919 and those of General Wran gel until the autumn of 1920, and against the Red Army until the summer of 192.1...
...This reorganization has not affected the principle which requires that common-law criminals be treated better than political prisoners...
...The generalizing of the strikes appears to coincide with the arrival of prisoners who had taken part in an earlier movement and, for that reason, had been removed by administrative order...
...THE LAST REVOLT of concentration camp prisoners before the long period of deathlike silence was the hunger strike that broke out at Vorkuta in the autumn of 1936...
Vol. 3 • April 1956 • No. 2
