The Big Kolyma Streetcar

“I offer this documentary narrative to all Stalin’s loyal devotees who to this day do not wish to believe that their idol deliberately propagated lawlessness and sadistic violence. Let them just for one moment imagine their wives, daughters and sisters in those gulags: it was only by chance that they were not there and we were.” [Readers are advised that this documentary contains passages with graphic, but certainly not gratuitious violence. – Ed.]

– Elena Glinka

I looked back, trying to imprint in my memory the road I had just traversed, along which a long gray column of prisoners slowly wound and stretched like a snake, repeating its every bend and turn. My starved eyes greedily drank in the landscape, although it was too barren to satisfy my visual hunger. The hills were waking up from their winter slumber, snow slowly melting down their slopes, covered with creeping shrubbery and occasional withered larches that fluttered in the wind.

When the human snake had finally negotiated the hill, a magnificent view opened up to us: the huge free ocean sprawled as far as the eye could see, gently splashing its greenish-azure waves. As a breath of long-forgotten freshness hit my lungs, dizziness filled my head and my whole body weakened.

We happily inhaled the life-giving sea air, so refreshing after the foul stench of the overcrowded prison cells and transit barracks, with their rancid mustiness characteristic of places packed with masses of long-unwashed bodies. This stench clung stubbornly to our bodies like dirty sweat, settling in our windpipes and palates with such a cadaverous sickly-sweetish smell that nausea never left us for an instant. We felt saturated with the stench, which exacerbated our physical discomfort as if our moral torment was not enough.

And then this sudden freshness, like God’s blessing, a gulp of vitality. Several thousand pairs of lungs hastily inhaled, trying to make the most of this unexpected gift.

After 16 months of solitary confinement my soul was uplifted by the sight and smell of the sea. I was seized with irrepressible joy and the desire to run, to soar, to embrace the earth, to cry on its bosom, kissing its every pebble and blade of grass. I wished I could dive into this cleansing sea and emerge a different being.

But reason cautioned me that my body must obey jailers’ orders as before. I had to trudge on with the endless prison column, five people in a row, with my head down and hands behind my back, all talking forbidden.

Walking next to me were four other young women, all of us political prisoners sentenced as “enemies of the people” under Article 58.

Tamara, an accordion player, happened to be on a holiday in the Crimea with her mother when the war broke out. The first days of the German invasion were utter chaos, all railroads closed and passes issued only by the military to recruits proceeding to their destinations. The trains were guarded and the stations packed with civilians – women with children trying desperately to get back home, queueing for days on end for tickets and then travelling in overcrowded goods trucks, on the platforms and roofs of trains, falling out of windows. Thousands upon thousands of innocent holiday-makers, business travellers, and transit passengers were trapped in the railway stations without medical help, necessary passes, or money. The confusion was awful: crowds rushed from the station to the trains and back, wild rumours circulated amid the deafening noise, foodstuffs vanished and strict rationing was introduced as prices sky-rocketed, and dysentery left its foul mark under the hot, unsanitary conditions. Trains rushed through the stations, never stopping, carrying newly-drafted soldiers to the frontlines. It was as if the whole country was on wheels.

The displaced people were picked up by the Germans right there at the stations and shipped to Germany as “Ostarbeiter” where they were distributed among factories, farms, and families. Tamara and her mother, dressed in their summer frocks and straw hats, could not get back to Moscow, try as they might. They were lucky to be sent to a German family that was secretly opposed to Nazism. Later Tamara met a Russian POW, fell in love with him and had a daughter by him. Tamara’s good looks often got her into trouble. A Soviet colonel fell madly in love with her “racial beauty,” as he put it, and when she rejected him, he had her arrested by Soviet occupational authorities. In 1947, she and her mother were transported from Berlin to a gulag in the Urals, while her little daughter remained in Germany and was put for adoption. Tamara’s mother did not last long in the inhuman living and working conditions of the Russian labour camp. Left alone, Tamara became the prey of the gulag chief, who tried to seduce her with promises of alleviating her work load. When she refused to give in, he had her court- martialed on a false accusation and she got an extra 10 years prison term added to her original 25.

Another of my new friends was Elena, a corpulent Lithuanian woman who was sent off to Germany with many other young Lithuanians as a cheap labour force in the very beginning of the war. Anti-Nazi resistance members helped the Ostarbeiter escape Germany to neutral countries, and this is how Elena found herself in Australia where she herded cattle on a prosperous farm. After the war she could have stayed and married the farmer’s son, but she returned home to her Lithuanian village in 1949. The same year she was arrested on a charge of “betrayal of the homeland” and dispatched to Siberia.

Zinaida, an architect from Moscow, was the only daughter of an eminent engineer who hailed the Soviets in 1917 and actively engaged in various construction projects of the new rule. Like many other Russian intellectuals, he was arrested in 1937 and spent ten years in Siberian labour camps, only to be arrested a second time in 1949 when he was already terminally ill with cancer. It was during this time that Zinaida lost her five-year-old son. The grief-stricken woman found her only consolation in religion and devoted herself to helping those in need and in distress. Because of her beliefs, she was arrested in 1950 for “anti-Soviet activities” and sentenced to 10 years of hard labour and disenfranchisement.

Walking next to me was Shura, a selfless and tender- hearted seamstress from Krasnodar who had moved to the city from her native Cossack village. She was sentenced to 25 years for singing ditties branded as “anti-Soviet”.

And finally there was me, a college student from Leningrad also sentenced to 25 years for concealing the fact that I spent the war on Nazi-occupied territory during the war. At the end of the 1940s people like me were not admitted to colleges.

Having covered many miles from the Central Transit Prison, the column was now slowly crawling towards the huge ocean steamer Minsk towering at the farthest moorage. It was a large cargo boat with five deep holds, specially equipped for transporting prisoners from the mainland to Kolyma, the land of forced labour camps. From the port of Vanino we would be taken to the Bay of Nagayevo, and then travel the remaining 5 or 6 kilometers on foot to Magadan, the Kolyma “capital.”

Shortly before reaching the ship, the column was stopped amidst the hills and we collapsed right there in the mud, surrounded by the guards and vicious Alsatians. For several long hours the police checked their lists and searched the prisoners. A truck was brought in, sides down, and demonstration punishments were held on its bed. Armed soldiers would throw one of the accused onto the truck, fasten him into a straitjacket made of coarse sacking with its sleeves tied behind his back, and beat the daylight out of the unfortunate offender, breaking his bones. His heart- rending shrieks reverberated among the majestic silent hills that watched the scene indifferently.

Finally it was time to board the ship. Row by row an endless line of prisoners climbed the wide boards that served as a ladder and disappeared in the ship’s cavernous holds as if swallowed by an enormous big-bellied monster. Men were driven into the stern and prow, while women were steered into the central hold.

At the foot of the ladder each female political prisoner was attacked by a group of common criminals who tore off whatever decent clothes she might still have on her. If the poor victim resisted she was cruelly beaten and stripped anyway. In exchange for her own clothes, she was given shabby lice-infested rags reeking of stale sweat.

I was seized at the entrance to the hold by a gang of five women headed by Strelka, who looked more like a handsome man than a woman. Later I understood why. I gave no resistance. It was no use, they’d rob and beat me anyway, to the accompaniment of the foulest obscenities. So as to preserve some dignity under the circumstances I took the initiative. “Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you myself,” I said. Strelka liked that. She eyed me with her bright elongated eyes and said:

“Fur collar, shoes, and scarf.”

“How do you mean, ‘fur collar’? It’s sewn to the coat.”

“I’ve no use for your coat, it’s too light, but I want the collar.”

Before I could count to three, Strelka made a circle around my neck with a razor blade and my collar was in her hands. I didn’t so much regret losing the collar as the letters from someone dear to me that I had hidden inside it. “Strelka, please give me back my letters – they’re sewn into the collar,” I begged her.

“You mean you want your treason letters back? And what if I report you to the police? You should be grateful I don’t have time right now.” She disemboweled my collar and stamped on my letters until they turned to pulp. Then her gang went for their next victim.

Stripped of my warm clothes and with somebody else’s old rubber galoshes flapping on my feet, I returned to the ladder hoping to find my friends. Pressing against the cold metal wall, I watched the descending women intensely. At last Elena’s stout figure appeared in the hatchway. I was very glad to see her, but my heart sank as I imagined what would happen to her now. Dressed in her Australian sheepskin coat and other solid warm things she was a godsend for the marauders. The moment she reached the ladder several gangs pressed nearer, waiting impatiently for their unsuspecting prey. Suddenly one gang attacked her from behind, pulling off her coat. It dawned on Elena what they were after and she assumed a defensive position. She fought the robbers fiercely, throwing the lightweight rascals right and left. But there were a dozen of them against one, and they were armed with razors. The last I saw of her she was stripped naked and bleeding heavily.

When my eyes were accustomed to the semi-darkness I discerned some strange structure in the depth of the hold. Many-tiered and constructed of thin metal pipes, it resembled a giant beehive and filled two-thirds of the hold. Only when I noticed a supply of boards lying in a pile nearby did I realize that these must be our bunks. Nobody told me anything, I had to figure things out on my own. Along one wall there were rows of stinking empty barrels which must be close-stools, I guessed. The floor was covered with wooden planking, but when the ship pitched or rolled, cold water splashed over the planking so that our feet were soaked from the start.

Desperate wailing filled the still half-empty hold as the gangs requisitioned warm clothes from the unfortunate new arrivals. The thieves brazenly attacked the newcomers, beating them, wounding them with their razors, torturing and humiliating them. The poor women moaned and swore, crying at the top of their voices. Resistence only made the marauders more aggressive. They cut fur coats into strips to make collars for themselves, pulled off hats, head-scarves and wollen underwear, confiscating anything of value. They pried open their victims’ mouths, looking for gold crowns which they rapped out with a tin spoon. If a woman resisted, they’d slash her face and hands with razor blades.

At first in this chaos nobody noticed other noises coming from the adjoining hold. But soon it became obvious that the dividing wall was being steadily pounded, as if with crowbars, from the other side. We all grew worried as the knocking grew stronger and faster. A team of six unarmed sailors came into our hold to inspect the wall, but the guards kept away, obviously afraid of being attacked by the female criminals in the confined space of the hold.

As I tried to understand what was happening, fear of some imminent danger turned me into a tight knot. The knocking continued and the wall shook, almost giving in. The sailors inspected the metal wall and exchanged worried glances. They glanced at the heated crowd with apprehension and climbed back on deck in a hurry. Neither the guards nor the sailors tried to enter our hold again.

The uproar on both sides of the wall subsided somewhat. The marauders tried on the looted clothes and traded them among themselves. Those of us who had been robbed had no choice but to reconcile ourselves to our desperate situation. We stood alone, depressed, not recognising one another, fearing to think of what would become of us without our warm clothing in the frigid climate of Kolyma.

The ship shook as the engines started and the Minsk cast off. The thundering noise from the other side of the wall resumed stronger than before, and the atmosphere in our hold changed visibly. Immediately putting two and two together, the experienced criminals rushed to the ladder and some of them managed to clamber onto the deck.

But we had not been driven into the hold so that we could escape now. The guards reacted promptly, barring the exit, their guns aimed at the fleeing women. I was seized with the panic that charged the air like electricity, and I rushed towards the exit with the rest. But the crush at the foot of the ladder was so dense that climbing it was unthinkable, to say nothing of getting out.

I caught sight of the tall Strelka who was fiercely trying to tear through the crowd with the help of her henchwomen. She was completely changed now: nothing was left of her insolence, even she looked frightened and doomed. Instinctive fear prompted me to watch her closely and do as she did – she was like a weather wane.

The guards barricaded the hatch with their guns. No one could get out now. Yet Strelka wildly and stubbornly fought her way up. I crawled up the ladder after her while other women pulled at my hair, hands and clothes, trying to drag me down. One of the guards aimed his gun at Strelka – and at that moment a deafening crash sounded as the metal wall finally cracked open.

Through the sharp, torn edges of the wall, half-naked male criminals poured in, their tattooed bodies glistening with sweat. With frightening squeals and howls of the sort that medieval nomad hordes must have emitted when attacking a particularly dangerous enemy, the men grabbed the nearest women and dragged them onto the bunks. The overcrowded hold was again filled with the women’s plaintive screams and entreaties, which blended with the men’s ululations and whoops.

“Hey guys! Get the broads on the bunks! Mount!” The hardest cases of the criminal world fell upon the women like sea pirates. And we witnessed the opening scenes of the endless gang rapes, known among convicts as the “Kolyma Streetcar”, that would last throughout our entire sea voyage. It was quickly gaining momentum and was soon raging with full force. Seeing it for the first time, I was in a state of deep shock.

Now the female marauders and their victims were all in the same situation, now we were all shouting and appealing to the guards for help. The terror-stricken crowd rushed towards the ladder in panic. Women climbed on top of one another, trampling on heads and hands, crushing those who failed to keep their balance, frantically trying to escape. We wailed and yelled as passengers on a fast-sinking ship must undoubtedly shout in the last minutes of their lives.

I was shouting with the others but not hearing my own voice. I can’t remember exactly what it was I yelled, but I know it was some sort of prayer. At the top of my voice I called to the Almighty, for there was no one else to appeal to, to save me, to lead me out of this hell. Suddenly I felt as if my strength tripled and I surged forward like a battering ram, oblivious of the scratching hands and kicking feet trying to pull me down and squeeze me out. I nearly reached the last rung of the ladder where Strelka was still savagely fighting the guards. She saw me and pushed me in the chest with such cruel force that I tumbled down to the bottom of the ladder. The crowd closed up again, becoming impenetrable.

I watched as up above the guards brought boards to nail down the hatchway. There was no way I could try climbing that ladder again. Suddenly I had a brainwave: it occurred to me that the only way to the top would be up the back side of the ladder. Like a monkey I clambered up, clutching at the rungs from the inner side. The other women kicked and pushed me, banging me on the head and chest, but the fear of being run over by the Kolyma Streetcar increased my strength ten-fold. I managed to make it to the hatch again.

Strelka was now fighting with the guards for dear life, pushing aside the gun that prodded her down. “Get back, you bitch or I’ll shoot!” the soldier shouted and almost at once discharged his gun right into her open shouting mouth. Her entire body shuddered, then stiffened and fell back into the arms of the women below her.

More women were killed and wounded by the guards before the crowd rolled back with piercing shrieks. Taking advantage of the recoil, I dexterously managed to climb onto the rung where Strelka had just stood. The hatch had already been partially nailed shut, and only a slit as wide as one board remained. I clutched at a board, trying to hoist myself out. The guard pointed his gun at me: “Get back, traitor, or I’ll shoot!” Without thinking I grabbed the barrel of his gun. The guard, caught unawares, instinctively pulled the gun towards himself. I flew up like a feather and found myself outside. The guards immediately nailed up the last board, closing the hatch for good.

Good God! How little one needs to feel happy! Just a speck of relative freedom, just a sliver of fragile safety seemed heaven to me after the ordeal of a few minutes ago.

There were about a dozen women on deck who had managed to escape from the hold in the beginning. Through the central hatch-coaming we could watch what was going on below. While I was busy fighting to get out on to the deck, the situation in the hold had changed. Its occupants were now concentrated on the bunks while the upper tier turned into an involuntary observation site for those lucky enough to be out of reach. The most perverted fantasy could not imagine the sadistic debauchery taking place on those bunks. All the women – the young and the old, mothers and daughters, political prisoners and common criminals – were being cruelly and mercilessly gang raped.

From the boundless men’s hold the dirty apes continued to stream forth, jumping and shouting obscenities and immediately joining the nearest raping queues, climbing to the upper bunks for more flesh. Women who resisted were killed on the spot. Many of the convicts were armed with knives, razors, and spikes, and here and there fights flared up among them. From time to time, to the accompaniment of foul obscenities and cheers, they tossed down corpses from the upper bunks – the women they had tortured to death. Card games staking human lives were widespread. A stench rose out of the holds as from a sewer, emanating not only from the soiled close-stools but from the thousands of long unwashed bodies. The deafening noise called to my mind a herd of wild beasts locked in a cage during a fire or an earthquake. If Hell really exists, the Kolyma Streetcar must have been its earthly manifestation.

In childhood I read a book about slave trade in America, and how poor black slaves were cruelly treated by white slave-traders as they were transported to the New World. But the atrocities described in that book paled in comparison to the torture these women endured.

During the night a few more enterprising women somehow managed to climb out of that hell. The guards allotted a tiny area for us and surrounded it with barbed wire. The Minsk was moving at a good speed further and further to the north, and at night the freezing cold numbed our bodies and minds. We had all been robbed of our warm clothes, and during a storm that night, icy waves rolled right over us. But none of us complained, for fear of being sent back into the hold.

With nothing better to do, I constantly watched the sea. The ship was followed on all sides by shoals of large fish. The putrid smell kept them close to the ship during the entire voyage, and they were not disappointed.

We were fed only once a day. At noon the prisoners on duty would cart in a huge wooden barrel filled to the brim with coarse gruel mixed with long stalks of greenish sea- kale and sand that crunched in our teeth. On top of the barrel they placed a dish with supply of tin spoons, some without handles, and lowered it down into the hold on ropes.

I had a chance to watch these mass feeding sessions a few times. The male prisoners leaped down from the bunks and rushed towards the barrel, pushing and shoving one another in their haste. Those who got there first managed to grab a spoon or snatch one from a neighbour, but others simply scooped gruel with their hands. Those in the back tugged at those in the front, pulling them by the hair or the pants, and then took their turn at the feeding trough. This continued until the barrel had been licked dry. From the feeding barrel the men proceeded directly to the close- stools.

From my observation post I could study the criminal world at its worst. Heavily tatooed, they looked like a unique multi-coloured race. Many of them had Stalin’s name or his portrait – sometimes in full dress uniform and generalissimo regalia – tatooed on their chests or backs, positioned to protect the heart. Indecent scenes of perverted sex were as popular as Stalin’s likeness. Snakes wound around bodies, their stingers pointed at the heart; religious tatoos of crosses, graves, and chains were also common. From my vantage point I read all manner of sentimental inscriptions (“no one will come to my nameless grave”) and crude slogans (“guts is better than luck”).

All those times I watched these scenes I never saw women among the eaters. Only God knows how the survivors managed to withstand the entire voyage.

The corpses of murdered women were hoisted up from the hold and thrown into the sea where sharks tore them to pieces right before our eyes, to the delight of the guards and prisoners alike. Strelka was the first one to be thus buried overboard. She was so desperate to get out of the hold when the male prisoners’ invasion began because, as I discovered, she was an active lesbian – lesbians being the worst enemies of male rapists, mercilessly murdered then and there.

Watching the frequent sea burials, I wondered how the guards would account for these deaths, for we prisoners had been continually checked and counted and searched and checked again. At the end of that fateful sea voyage on the Minsk I no longer wondered: the Kolyma Streetcar which was allowed to happen in the presence of the guards and with the mute consent of the authorities convinced me that no one was responsible for our lives.

As more and more women escaped from the hold, the small patch of the deck allotted to us became increasingly overcrowded. We were treated worse than cattle. We spent the last three days standing, pressed to each other, forced to relieve ourselves right where we stood.

At last the Minsk arrived in the port of Nagayevo. Those of us on deck were the first to step onto the soil of Kolyma. It was drizzling, and our small group of hungry, exhausted, freezing women huddled beneath the low, grey sky for many hours. We were carefully searched and counted again and again. I wondered what might be keeping us.

Soon we learned that the rapists refused to leave the hold and would not let the women go – every woman who tried to escape was murdered on the spot. The guards raged and shouted, they shot in the air, but nothing worked.

Firemen were summoned. They pumped water into the hold to drive the rapists out like bedbugs. The hold filled with water, and soon the lower bunks were under water. The men climbed onto the top bunks, corpses and excrement floated on the surface of the water. But the rapists did not surrender and would not emerge from the hold for many more hours. The water rose higher until eventually the last rapists were fished out with hooks and nets.

The women who were finally released from this hell were a heart-rending sight – martyrs who had passed through all the circles of hell.

In the evening all of us newly-arrived prisoners were driven to Magadan. On our way we passed columns of emaciated, somber old-timers who looked back at us with compassion.

We had only just arrived in the land of lawful lawlessness, but the echo of that particularly outrageous Kolyma Streetcar on the Minsk in May 1951 would reverberate throughout the prison land for a long time to come. Its horrible consequences revealed themselves in the months and years ahead as venereal and gynecological diseases, mutilated babies born of forcible violations, nervous disorders, mental illness, and suicides.

Elena Glinka lives and writes in St. Petersburg. This story was translated by Natasha Perova and is published here in English for the first time. It was published in Russian in 1990, in the journal Raduga. (Tallinn)