Boris Perchatkin

PATH OF FIRE

And except those days should be shortened,
there should no flesh be saved…
Matthew 24:22

A documented, factual account of one of the most brutal religious persecution of the 20th century.

Chapter 1

                                                      Servants of Satan

	“You are in our hands and your God cannot help you!” he said.  “You believe in God, but I believe in and serve Satan.  Yes, yes, I indeed serve Satan.  Look around you, look, what is happening in the world, everywhere and in everything you will see the victory of Satan.  The understanding of evil and good – is relative understanding, depending on from which side you are looking at it.  What you consider to be good, in reality becomes evil and vice versa.  Therefore, who has the victory has the truth, and understanding of truth will always be on the side of the conqueror.  Where have you seen the good, as you perceive and understand it, will conquer the evil in the world?  The understanding of evil in your imagination is wrong; in life the evil always becomes the good and the truth.  Look on the map,” he pointed to the map of the world, hanging on the wall across from me. “Not too long ago we were a little dot on the map, but now half of the world is red, and we are moving, and no God can stop us.  If we were to be wrong, if Satan is not with us, would we have had such success?”
	He took a pen, like a geography teacher and begun showing me.  “Look at how we were moving and forcing God out,” his pen slid on the map, “everywhere, where we had gone, we forced God out, therefore Satan is stronger that God, and I serve this power.”  During the conversation he stood then sat down not taking his hypnotizing eyes off me, not even for a second.  I looked into the eyes of the investigator and thought that Satan himself was speaking to me.
	“Who are you?” I asked.
“Colonel Istomin, KGB antireligion, special investigator. I conducted the cases of Sergey Kovalev, *Alexander Ginsberg, ** and many of your other like-minded friends. I hope you have heard about me.  I hope you understand that I didn’t come from Moscow just to look at you.”
	Of course, I had heard about Colonel Istomin but I had not expected the KGB to consider my case so important. Now I knew they would have no mercy trying to break me.  The two previous months of interrogation by Colonel Kuzmin, the two rounds of chemical torture, and the ten hours of confinement in the ‘hole’ were nothing in comparison to what awaited me.
	Istomin interrupted my thoughts. “Now, closer to the case.  We are interested in how, and through whom, you passed information abroad.”
	I refused to answer the question.
	“Are you acquainted with the American diplomat Robert Pringle, who was expelled from the USSR as a CIA agent?”
	“I don’t know any CIA agents so I couldn’t have passed them any information.  Besides, the CIA doesn’t have anything to do with religion in the USSR.”
	“We’ll talk about that information later. I still say you passed information abroad, but now I want to know how you became acquainted with Pringle.  What were the circumstances?  Did you pass information through him?  What kind of information was it?  How?
“I don’t have to tell you which diplomats I know.”
“That’s not an answer.  I need an answer.  Yes or No.”
I refused to answer the question.
	“Okay.  Let’s continue. What do you know about Hudson and Joe Preseley, the American diplomats?  Answer fast!  Don’t stop to think about it!”
	I refused to answer.
	“Then I’ll refresh your memory. We know that you contacted a ranking KGB officer illegally and received strategic government information from him.   I don’t need to tell you the consequences of receiving and passing on information through your contacts with foreign diplomats, so spit it out.   You can mitigate your guilt with a frank confession and cooperation with our investigation.  I hope you realize we know your every step but we are giving you a chance to repent and confess voluntarily.  Don’t forget how much depends on me.  You have something to think about. 

 	My familiar escorts, two KGB ensigns, appeared at the door.  One of them was young, twenty-eight years old, short but powerfully built.  The other was a thin, old man, average in height, with a sickly looking face. Somehow, the two resembled each other. I never did find out their names.  It was not allowed.
	“Hands behind your back!” commanded the old man. “Don’t turn around.  Don’t talk.  A step to the right or to the left is considered attempted escape.  I’ll shoot without warning.”
We walked down the corridor of the Vladivostok KGB prison.  To the right and to the left were interrogation rooms, some of them with signs reading, “Do not disturb! Do not enter! Interrogating foreign agents!”  Chinese deserters were interrogated in those rooms.  Just a few steps beyond the interrogation rooms, on the right side of the corridor, were side passages leading to the cells.  On the left side were four solitary confinement cells.  As I walked down the corridor, I had no sensation of being in prison.  Only the presence of escorts reminded me.  However, when the guards and I turned down a side passage, I began feeling that I was in prison. I never did discover how many passages and cells were further on down the corridor.  In the KGB prison, I was always led down the same passage and put in the same cell, number 3.
It was a six by nine-foot room, with seven and a half feet to the ceiling. Just below the ceiling was a small window, too small to crawl through. The glass was a lusterless color with meshed wire grating. I always wondered why they needed such a window at all.  You could not see through it and almost no light penetrated it.
The KGB cells provided extreme isolation from the outside world. It was so quiet that you could hear the roaring in your ears.  You never knew whether someone was in the next cell.
	I lay down on the plank bunk and began to remember. 

Early in the morning on the 18th of August 1980, I was walking to work when KGB agents surrounded me in a half circle.  They came at me from the left, from the right, and from behind.  I could not turn around or move to the side.  I was like an exhausted deer, which the hunting dogs drive to the hunter’s shot.  I could only walk forward. From somewhere, a car darted up and stopped beside me abruptly.  Three men jumped out and one of them thrust some kind of paper in my face saying:  “Your game is over.  You are under arrest.”
They put me in a prison truck and escorted me to Vladivostok, a hundred and fifty kilometers away. They put me in a steel cage like an animal.  It was a one-person cage with an armed escort of three officers, their pistols readied.  It was an escort befitting an especially dangerous criminal.  It was impossible to escape.     
 	In anguish, I looked out of the cage through a little crack.  Painfully familiar scenes flew past me. We drove past the bay, filled with merchant ships. How often I had driven along this street!  How often I had walked it. How often I had looked at the bay.  The bay ended and the car sped out of the city - the city where my family remained. I suddenly felt that time had stopped and congealed.  Now, I knew that only memories would tie me to the past. A new life had begun for me, and with it, the reckoning of a new time. By the will of God, I had been set upon an unfamiliar path.  I had no idea how long it would be.
We drove up to the prison gates that evening. The head of the escort discussed something with the guards.  Then the huge, toneless, iron gates swung open; then another gate, the same as the first.  As soon as the car passed through, the gates slammed shut with a clank. 

The Vladivostok prison stood before me.  There were two, huge, six-storey buildings, connected by overpasses.  The buildings were made of red brick.  Instead of windows, there were some kind of odd-looking structures made of metal strips resembling blinds.  The blinds were covered with some kind of boxed, steel grating. The prison made a sinister impression on me.  It was like a sarcophagus, preserving not only bodies, but human souls as well. Nothing could steal in or out. 
Forty-seven years ago, my grandfather was imprisoned here. He was a Baptist minister, convicted for organizing church services.  He had died here somewhere. Back then, my grandmother told me, there was ordinary grating on the windows. She could see grandpa from the street and could shout things to him. 
I looked at the prison and wondered to myself:  “How many people have stood here like I am now?  How many people has this prison swallowed? How many found their final resting-place here?”
It was obvious that the greedy maw of the prison had been enlarged recently.  The two upper stories were new construction.  A distance from the prison courtyard, to the side of the building on the right, I could see more construction in the light of the searchlights. An eighteen-foot brick wall surrounded it all. At each corner stood stone watchtowers armed with sub-machine guns.
This prison, the government’s idol and God, required unending sacrifices.  It was prepared to swallow its next victim - me.

The blow from the butt of a machine gun in my back brought me to attention. “What are you staring at?”  You’ll have many chances to see the prison. This isn’t some health-resort.”
They took me to the guardroom, where they admitted new prisoners.  There were three men there in military uniform sitting behind a partition. In the middle was a colonel, obviously from the Caucuses. I found out later that this Chechen took pleasure in torturing prisoners.  Today he was the officer in charge of receiving prisoners under escort.
The head of the escort handed him my file, but the Chechen had already been expecting me.  Calmly, without raising his voice, he said,  “Well, sweetheart, if you had stolen something or even killed someone, you would be respected here, but with these charges, you’ll have a tough time.”  Then just as calmly, he told the sergeant, “Put him in ‘little bed-bug’.”   

Chapter 2
‘Little Bed-Bug’

They called cell number ninety-five ‘the little bed-bug.’  It was about six by ten feet in size.  There were two tiers of plank bunk beds on each side of the room.  The cell walls were made of rough, cement plaster.
There were already eighteen men in the cell but I noticed immediately that no one was lying on the bunks.  I greeted people but no one paid any attention to me.  Everyone was absorbed in his own thoughts.  Some of them had been arrested a few days ago, some of them a few hours earlier, but no one had recovered from the shock of arrest.
I noticed a young man about twenty-two years old.  I thought it might be possible to talk to him.  He was squatting on the floor without touching the walls.  I squatted down beside him.
“Where are you from, friend?”
“From Nahodka.”
“Been here long?”
“Since this morning.”
I noticed that the young man brightened up as I spoke to him.
“My wife and child are still free.  My daughter is only six months old. How will they get along now?  I know I’ll get three years for sure. 
“What did they get you for?” 
“Article 88, illegal currency transaction.  I worked as a waiter in a restaurant at the marine passenger terminal.”
“Why do they call this cell ‘little bed bug?’
“The whole cell is full of bed bugs.  Look around!  No one is sitting on the bunks.  There are bed bugs everywhere - in the cracks, in the walls, in the plank bunk beds.  You’ll feel them soon.”
“How long do we have to stay in this ‘little bed bug?’
“About three days, but then, they say, it gets worse. They’ll put us through ‘the snare’ to frighten us.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know myself but everyone is afraid of it.  That’s the rumor going around.”
Just then I felt something fall onto my shoulder.  A bed bug about the size of a fingernail went running along my shoulder.  I flicked it off in disgust.  A toothless, old man was watching me. I could tell that he was not here for the first time. “You’re from the intelligentsia, aren’t you?” he asked.  Without waiting for a reply, he continued.  “The paratroopers are beginning to jump.”  He was referring to the bed bugs.  I looked at the ceiling.  Bed bugs were scurrying around the ceiling. Marking their victim, they dropped down with remarkable accuracy.
Toward morning, several prisoners could no longer endure squatting, or standing.  
They lay down on the bunks but a few minutes later, they jumped up, cursed, scratched, lay down again, then jumped up again.  Some of them had already given up and gone back to squatting, trying not to lean on the wall, where the bed bugs could attack.  Other prisoners were trying to sit on the bunks and then lie down, but they got up too.  Only the toothless, old man remained lying down, his hands under his head.  “What’s a bed bug?” the old man preached. “A bed bug is nothing.  It drinks a little blood and runs away.  You scratch for a day and you forget all about it, but the cops drink your blood for a lifetime.  When you land here, they drink your blood.  When you leave, they don’t forget you.  They chase you down to get you back.  Now those cops are real bugs!  The bugs here in the cell are no bugs at all.  Besides, bed bugs don’t bite everybody.  A bed bug runs up and bites you but if it doesn’t like your blood, it runs away and tell the others.  They won’t bite you.”
	It was hot and stifling in the ‘little bed bug.’  Clothing stuck to bodies damp with perspiration. Legs trembled from the constant strain of standing or squatting and clouds of disgusting, fat, green flies flew through the grating, swarmed in front of clammy faces, and tried to perch on faces and arms.  You had to swat them away constantly. You did not think about food at all but you wanted something to drink.   There was no water.
	On the second day, towards evening, several prisoners began to bang on the door demanding water.  The prison guards - the prisoners call them ‘dubaks’* - came running to see what the noise was all about. The feeding trough opened – the little window in the door, where they pass in the food. “What do you want?” asked the dubak.  “You’re not letting the prison sleep.  Why are you making so much noise?”
“It’s two days without water.  It’s hot.  We want something to drink.
“Do you have any cups?”
“Yeah.  A few.”
The prisoners began gathering up their cups.
“Not so many,” remarked the dubak.  I need only one cup.  I’m not a camel.  I don’t drink much water.  My bladder’s designed for only one cup.”
It had grown quiet in the cell but when the dubak made this remark, everyone began bellowing.  The dubak quickly slammed shut the feeding trough.  The prisoners began shouting even louder.  They banged even harder on the door. The old man was the only one who did not get up from his place. “Now they’ll come and straighten them out,” he said.
The feeding trough opened again and a hand holding a long, pointed wire reached through. It was the same kind of wire used to poke through mattresses during searches.  The hand jabbed the wire in various directions and then disappeared.  Through the trough, I could see the wide, heavy face of a Buryat**dubak with narrow, slit eyes and a nose with almost no bridge.
 “I’ll get you something to drink,” he shouted. 
About a minute later, the cell door opened and four dubaks stood in the doorway.  One dubak stared at the prisoners.  His gaze stopped at me.  “Your ugly mug looks too smart.  How did you get here?”
I named the statutes and the charges.
“Those are some strange charges!”
He tried to recall something, seemed to remember, and then pointed his wire at the old man and me.  “You two stay here, but the rest of you, walk out in the corridor, one by one!”
Four dubaks with metal whips stood waiting in the corridor. All the prisoners immediately decided they were not thirsty. 

Chapter 3
Torture in ‘the Snare’

I was detained in the ‘little bed-bug’ for three days but on the fourth day, they brought all of us into the corridor.  The neighboring cells were also opened and the prisoners were led out from there too.  Altogether, there were about sixty of us.  They counted us and led us through the prison’s underground passages.  The last passage opened into a big hall.
The hall was rectangular, big, about forty-five feet long and twenty feet wide.  In the center of the hall was a long, narrow bench. Its foundation had been set in the concrete floor.  Near the bench stood two prison barbers, prisoners themselves.  In the left corner of the hall were three dubaks and a bucket.  There was a stick in the bucket.
When we had all gathered in the hall, one of the dubaks began explaining:  “We are going to cut off all your hair.  You are not allowed to have hair, but before we do that, we will disinfect all of you.”
Everyone moaned.  It was obvious that many prisoners knew what “disinfect” meant.
“You will have your hair cut,” continued the dubak, “only after we have applied some of this ‘heavenly lotion’ on you.  I’d smear some on myself,” he joked, “but then there wouldn’t be enough to go around.  Now get undressed!  No one is allowed to take a shower until everyone has had the ‘lotion’ applied.  The sooner it’s done, the sooner the shower.  It all depends on how long you take dancing around the hall.”
The prisoners undressed.  I did not see what happened to the first prisoners because I was in the middle.  When my turn came, there were already ten prisoners sitting on the bench, screaming and writhing and waiting their turn for shearing.  When my turn came, I shouted,  “You have no right to do this! Why are you torturing these people?” The bathhouse supervisor looked at me in astonishment.  “Young man, have you gone out of your mind?  We ask the questions here.  Can’t you see that the people are in a hurry to get to the showers?”  He pointed at the writing prisoners.  “You’re holding them back.”
“By law, you don’t have the right to cut our hair until we’re sentenced.  I’m still under investigation,” I replied.
Without giving me another glance, the bathhouse supervisor shouted:  “Hey, we’ve got some kind of a screwball here.  Give him some more!”
A dubak ran up to me and began smearing me with ‘lotion.’  It felt cold.  Then gradually the cold turned into an unbearable burning.  After two or three minutes, it seemed like my body was being torn to shreds and the pain overcame me completely.  It spread throughout my whole body, filled my consciousness, and directed all my attention to freeing myself from pain. I tried to preserve my dignity, tried not to scream, but the ‘lotion’ knocked the wind out of me and I moaned involuntarily.  While all this was going on, a few more dubaks came into the hall with spiked clubs and dogs.
I was only semi-conscious when they cut off my hair.  I caught flashes of naked people writhing, cowering, jumping around, and screaming.  An elderly man near me fainted, probably from a weak heart.
A door opened just to the right of the dubaks, who were applying ‘lotion’ on the prisoners.  Someone noticed that the showers were running there.  A few of the prisoners made a dash for the showers, trampling anyone who happened to fall in the way.  Ten seconds later, the other prisoners followed and a bottleneck developed at the door.  The door was narrow and there were too many prisoners trying to pass through.  The strong ones knocked down the weak ones and trampled over them.  Some of the prisoners ended up crawling.  It was a dreadful scene.
I also found myself in the shower.  As soon as the first prisoners made it to the showers, the water was turned off.  By the time everyone else was in the showers, the water was flowing from only one faucet.  The prisoners rushed to the solitary stream of water, knocking each other down, trampling each other, and only getting in each other’s way.
The dubaks stood at the bathhouse doors the whole time and laughed.  They thought it was funny.  Finally, they turned on the water again.  The prisoners began washing off the solution and coming to their senses.  The dubaks used a hose to rinse off the man who had fainted.  When it was over, we were returned to our old cells.
That was the ‘snare.’  I was in pain for three more days but not to the same degree as before.  Nonetheless, the pain lingered on.  Several days later, my skin began to peel.
I was back in ‘little bed-bug’, but not for long.  They began calling us out in little groups, five or six prisoners at a time.  They brought us to the medical clinic, photographed us, took fingerprints, and then brought us back to ‘little bed-bug.’  Towards evening, they began putting us into different cells. 

Chapter 4
Prison Lessons

I ended up in cell number fifty-three in the first bloc.  Before I entered the cell, they issued me a mattress but no blanket or sheet.  Like they say in prison, the mattress looked like a hundred people had died on it.  A dirty bag stuffed with cotton or rags, it only vaguely resembled a mattress.  To lie down on it, a person had to get the cotton or rags distributed evenly.  I wondered if my grandfather might have slept on this mattress.
When I stepped over the threshold of cell number fifty-three, there was no one in it although it was usually a four-man cell.  There were two double bunks along the sides of the cell.  To the right of the door was a toilet, an improvised toilet.  It was a stone block about twenty inches high and about the same in length and width.  In the middle of it was a hole, about two to three inches in diameter, and a pipe and faucet coming out the hole.  The toilet was all out in the open, unenclosed.  I found out later that whenever the prisoners needed to use the toilet, they went up to the pipe, turned on the faucet, and had to do their business in open view.
While I was standing at the doorway, they brought in another prisoner, who had been out for exercise.  He walked through the door and it slammed behind him.
“Hello,” he said.  “Are you in transit or from here?”
“In transit.”
“Where are you from?”
“From Nahodka.”
He offered me his hand.  “My name is Boris.”
“Mine too,” I said, shaking his hand.  
My new acquaintance was average in height, thin.  His face was sallow.  I guessed he was not in the fresh air much.
“What are you in for?”
“Statute 190 and 70.” I gave him the numbers, which did not give him much information.  He had never heard of them.
“First time?”
“Yes, first time.”
“I’m here for the second.  I never heard of those statutes.”
I told him a little bit about myself.
“You’re a good liar, but you could have invented something simpler.”
“What do you mean by ‘liar’?”
“You’re telling me fairy tales.  What you say is impossible now.  There are no religious believers any more, only old ladies and grandpas.  I never met any young ones.  You say this is your first time here.  Then, I had better show you the ropes.  Otherwise, an intellectual like you, who doesn’t know anything, will land in a big house with fifty people and won’t be able to defend himself. The brothers will see it immediately and try to take advantage of you, at the very least, make you a ‘pig.’ 
“What’s a ‘pig’?”
“Well, a ‘pig’ sleeps under the bunks, washes everybody’s socks, stand at the throne all day with a mop, congratulates everybody when the load is relieved, and lights the ‘torch’ to clear the bad air.  A ‘pig’ also sings songs for the brothers.
Leading me towards the toilet, Boris continued.  This is the ‘throne.’  Before you can use it, you have to know the rules.  When you have to go, first make sure no one is eating and that there is no food on the block.  When you are sure of that, then warn everybody that you are going to the ‘throne’.  That way, nobody will get out any food. The second rule is to make a paper ‘torch’.  Then, walk up to the ‘throne’, turn on the faucet, and light the ‘torch’.  Don’t even think about missing the mark.  Sure you need some skill, but try.  The torch helps freshen the air.  After you finish, wash your hands.”  He showed me the sink opposite the toilet. Then he continued his lessons.
“You have to keep your eyes and ears open in prison or you won’t make it.  Listen to what the dubaks are talking about in the corridor.  Listen for every sound coming from right or left, from above or below, from anywhere.  You have to get a feel for life in prison.  There are ‘horses’ trotting all around the prison.  It’s death without ‘horses.’  If you hear a rap on the ceiling, accept the horse.  If there are three raps, the ‘horse’ isn’t for you.  Give it the road.”
I did not understand a thing.  What ‘horses?’ What ‘roads’?
Boris shook his head.  ‘You don’t understand all this nonsense, do you?”
He walked to the window, fumbled with the windowsill, and pulled something out.  It was a nail wrapped with thread.
“This is a ‘horse’.”
“How do you use it?”
“I’ll show you.  The ‘horses’ go all around the prison.  If a ‘horse’ arrives at your house, fifty-three, and it needs to be forwarded to another block, say three-hundred, the first thing you have to do is smack up to the dubak and the ‘tamer.’
“What’s a ‘tamer’?  What do you mean by ‘smack up to’?”
“What?  You mean, you don’t even know what a ‘tamer’ is?   It’s like in the circus, an animal tamer.  We are the animals and the people who feed us are the ‘animal tamers.’  The ‘tamers’ bring around the ‘slop.’ They go around to all the floors.  ‘Smack up’ means to be on good terms with them, you know, have them dependent on you.”
“How can they be dependent on us when we’re the prisoners?”
“The first thing you need to understand is that everyone here is a criminal - the prisoners, the people who made the arrests, and the guards.  Everything is for sale here.  This prison is a big bazaar.”
He reached under the sink and pulled out a plastic bag.  “Look at this!  Tea is forbidden in prison, but I have tea.  Having tea will cost you fifteen days in a punishment cell, but guess who brought it to me?  A dubak!  If he has a lot of tea, he gives it to a tamer to sell.”
“How can you buy it without money?  They confiscated all the money at the guard room.”
“Hey, my friend, you really don’t know a thing.  If you have friends or relatives who want to help you, you write them a letter and send it through a dubak, illegally.  The dubak gives you an address where your friends and family send the money.  Say your family sends you five hundred rubles.  The dubak takes half for himself and gives the rest to you.  Then he sells you things or you can buy from someone else.  Let’s say a package of tea goes for seventy kopecks, or a ruble, on the outside.  He will sell it to you for ten rubles.  If a bottle of vodka costs five rubles on the outside, he will sell it to you for fifty.”
“You mean you can get vodka here?”
“Sure! And that’s not all they sell.”
He reached for a pack of cigarettes and took one out.  “Do you know what this is?”
“No, I don’t smoke.”
“It’s a narcotic – hashish.  You smoke it.  This kind of cigarette costs five rubles.  Now you can understand why the dubak is dependent on you.  You need the dubaks and they need you, but you can’t trust every dubak.  The dubaks won’t trust just anybody either.  Everybody cheats each other here.  A dubak will sell tea, hashish, and vodka in one house, then do a search in the next house and confiscate everything, but it’s an iron-clad rule that he won’t confiscate things from the house he sells to.
There’s another way to make money in prison.  Before you even set foot in the guardroom, the dubaks have set a price on all the clothing you have on.  Sometimes, especially in winter, a person shows up who’s too well dressed.  Maybe they arrested him when he was out visiting or at the movies.  See, he’s dressed in a couple thousand worth – a sheepskin coat, an expensive sable or mink coat, imported shoes and suit, or an expensive sweater.  If he happens to have gold teeth, then they send him straight from the guardroom to the ‘rag-pickers’ cell.”  
“Who are they?”  
“You mean the ‘rag-pickers’?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there are different cells here.  There are special cells for ‘rag-pickers’.  Those guys are the criminals who want to have an easy life here.  In that kind of cell, they fleece anyone who is too well dressed.”
“What do they do with them?  Undress them?”
“Why undress them?  That’s not nice.  The ‘rag-pickers’ undress them another way.  It’s easy.  The ‘rag-pickers’ play checkers, dominos, or cards among themselves.  It doesn’t really matter what game they play, just as long as they’re playing.  They play and play, and the well-dressed guy can’t resist.  He sits down with them to play.  The ‘rag-pickers’ let him win a few games, but when he wins, they say they’re just playing for fun.  They let him win a cigarette, then matches.  The guy gets so excited, he forgets he’s in prison.  Then they begin the scam.  One of them plays the game while the others watch.  They give each other signals.  It’s impossible to win.  The cards are marked.  That’s how they start to undress him.  In no time at all, he’s lost all his clothing, doesn’t have anything else to play with but he still wants to win his stuff back.  They start playing for knee-bends.  If he loses one time, he has to do fifty knee-bends.  He can play on credit, but he either wins or does knee-bends. After he loses to the tune of a couple thousand knee-bends, they tell him he has to do the knee-bends before he can play anymore.
He begins bargaining with them about how much time he has to do the knee-bends.  They give him a day.  They know that even a professional athlete can’t do that many knee-bends without training for it.  Well, the guy keeps doing knee-bends until he can’t stand up any more.  The urge him on saying ‘come on, you can do it!’ He’s in no condition to stand up, let alone do more knee-bends, so he begins to beg them to let him pay it off some other way.  If he has gold crowns, they tell him one crown is worth a hundred knee-bends.  See, he still owes them a thousand knee-bends.  Right then, they get him to write a letter to his relatives asking them to send money.  They give him an address.  Now ten knee-bends is worth a ruble.  Sometimes, it costs a ruble a knee-bend.  It depends on the deal he makes.  He’ll be kept in the cell until the money arrives.  He won’t be transferred anywhere.  The prison administration is in on it.
If the money doesn’t get there on time, they beat him up and make him write letters to other relatives.  When he’s finally transferred out of the cell, the dubaks gather up his clothing and pay the ‘rag pickers’ with tea, vodka, and hashish. ”
My new acquaintance gave me a stern warning.  “Don’t ever play games with anyone, not even for fun!  Now, I only told you a little.  You have to keep an eye out for yourself.  Don’t miss a thing, otherwise you won’t get out of here, especially if the KGB is on your tail like you say.
There are some other things.  Don’t ever call a cell a ‘cell’.  We call it a ‘house’ or a ‘home.’  You know, like the line in the song:  ‘Men, a real prison is a real home.’  You’re not saying the house numbers right either.  Our house isn’t ‘fifty-three’. It’s ‘five-three’.  You have to get used to it.  It’s not ‘two hundred and fifty-five’.  It’s ‘two-five-five’.  That way we don’t get the houses mixed up.  You need it for the telephones.”  
I was overjoyed.  “Where is the telephone?”
Boris smirked.  “We’ve got several ‘telephones.’  There’s the first one.”  He pointed to the faucet on the throne.  “If you need to talk to someone about unimportant stuff, shout into the pipe like this: ‘eight-five, eight-five’.  That’s the cell above us, on the third floor.  They will hear you.  All right, now watch me.”
Boris began shouting into the pipe.  “Eight-five, eight-five, please come in.”  Turning to me, he said, “Now I’m going to find out something about you.”
A few seconds later, there was a muffled reply through the telephone.  “This is eight-five responding.”
“Do you have somebody there from Nahodka?”
“No, we don’t but we’ll find out.”
We stood and waited.  About five minutes later, we heard the reply.
“Five-three, five-three, please come in.”
“This is five-three responding.”
“Half the people in house five-one are from Nahodka.”
“Find out if they know anybody by the name of Perchatkin.”
Five minutes later, we again heard the reply. “We’ve heard about him.  He was written up in the newspapers.  He’s a Baptist or something.  Maybe political.”
Boris looked at me and laughed.  “You see, you can’t fool anybody here.  I saw right away that you didn’t look like a criminal.”
Boris walked around the cell, then picked up an aluminum cup.  “This is another ‘telephone’.  It’s almost time for dinner, so let’s get some sugar.”
He took a pillow and hit it against the wall twice.  “The noise can’t be heard in the corridor.  We can hardly hear it ourselves but they can hear it next door.”
There was a responding thud on the wall. My new acquaintance placed the bottom of the cup against the wall and began to shout into it like a megaphone.  His voice sounded muffled as if through water.  “This is five-two, five-two.  There are two of us here.  Our cupboard is bare.  If you’ve got some ‘gravy,” send us some – some sugar, at least.”
Then he turned the cup over, placed it against the wall again, pressed his ear to the rim, and listened.  Then he turned the cup over once more to speak.  “Okay.  My trainer is ready.  I’ll send him over.  I’m out of  ‘wood’ too, so send me some if you can.”
While he was talking on the telephone, I could hear kettles rattling in the corridor and feeding troughs being opened and closed.  They were distributing ‘slop’.  As we waited for the food, Boris glanced at my mattress, which I had thrown on an upper bunk.  “There’s something else,” he said.  “Don’t ever put your mattress on the upper bunk if there’s a place free on the lower bunk!”
He took my mattress and threw it on another bunk, on a lower bunk.  “Every kind of garbage sleeps on the upper bunks, not pigs, of course, because they sleep under the bunks, but all sorts of garbage.  You can tell who they are by their faces.”
The feeding trough opened and some kind of galvanized iron pipe was pushed through.  Boris grabbed the teapot from the block and held it under the pipe.  Boiled water, now cool, poured out.  While the teapot filled with water, Boris whispered something into the trough.  The pipe disappeared, the trough slammed shut but a few minutes later, it opened again.  Bread appeared on the ledge.  Boris ran over, took the bread, and handed it to me to put on the block.  As the ‘pig slop’ was handed in, Boris carried on another whispered conversation.
In another few minutes, we were eating the slop.  This time it consisted of very sour, stinking, boiled cabbage and a few little pieces of potato.  I fished out the potato, ate it, and remarked, “I can’t eat this slop.”
“That’s because you haven’t been here long.  Pretty soon, when you’ve lost some weight, you’ll eat it.  Of course, when I get ‘gravy’ from my mother, I don’t eat the slop either.” I concluded that ‘gravy’ meant a parcel from outside. 
The feeding trough opened again.  A magazine and a small packet dropped through.  There was sugar in the packet, about half a cup.
 “Now we can boil water for tea.”  Help me get the ‘wood’ ready.”  I decided that ‘wood’ meant ‘magazine.’  
He took the magazine and tore out about ten pages.  “Now I’ll show you how to make ‘kindling’.  Tea is forbidden in prison.  It’s even worse to burn something.  The dubaks let you light a ‘torch’ when you go to the throne but when you boil water for tea, there can’t be any smoke.  There are a few different ways to boil water so that there’s no smoke or smell.  This is the most efficient way.   Take each end of the thread and stretch it out vertically.  Put some tension on it.”
 I did what he said.  Then he took a magazine leaf, placed it against the thread, and began cutting it with deft movements.  He cut each page into three lengthwise strips, folded each length of the strip in half, and then folded it once more on the diagonal, forming little triangles.  “Help me,” he said, and we quickly formed the strips of paper into triangles.
  Then Boris reached for his cup.  I noticed the cup’s handle had been wrapped with thick, cloth thread, which provided insulation for the hand that held the cup.  The triangles were burned up, one after another.  When there were only three or four triangles left, the tea water began boiling, Boris threw in a spoonful of tea.  There was no smoke and almost no smell.  
“If you’re boiling tea and a dubak happens to open the feeding trough and ask you a question,” warned Boris, “you have to answer him but go on boiling the water at the same time.  Hide the fire by moving the cup behind the toilet block or have somebody else stand in the way.  Then the dubak can go on talking to you or asking a question and the stupid idiot won’t catch on.  You always have to be smarter than the dubak or you won’t survive.” 
As we sat drinking our tea, Boris continued his lessons.  “You have the kind of case where they send in an informer, no matter what house you’re in.  Keep a look out.  They will keep changing informers and there may even be more than one in the same house.  Look for somebody who suddenly gets real sympathetic with you.  Don’t give him any information.  Don’t let anybody ever know when you’re in a bad mood.   They usually try to get to you when you’re in a bad mood.  Never admit anything to anyone, even if they catch you in the act.  They’re the investigators, so let them prove you guilty.  Don’t do anything to help them. Just look them right in the eye and deny everything.  They count on someone being really nervous.” 
“How can you identity an informer?”
“Not ‘identify’, but ‘flush out.’  That’s what we call it here. It’s simple.  An informer will never be a first-timer. Look for repeat offenders like me. Don’t tell anyone what you’re in for.  Tell them you stole a bag of oats or something.  If somebody starts to get interested in you, you can tell if he already knows something about you by the questions he asks.  Punch him in the face and get him out of the house.  The brothers will always help you.”
Boris went on with his lessons.  “There’s another way to identify someone who is watching you or is interested in you.  A guy on his first walk usually has a wife, a girlfriend, or a mother who brings him ‘gravy’, but someone like me, who nobody needs – no wife, no girlfriend, and who only has friends when he’s free – that’s the guy to look for.  If somebody’s mother is still alive, she is allowed to bring him ‘gravy’ once a month while he’s still under investigation. If you see a guy who’s been in more than once – a guy who’s rolling in tea, cigarettes, and everything, and he keeps getting called out to the health clinic, to the lawyer, or to interrogation, and he comes back with stuff, then watch out!  The guy usually has a phony explanation.  He says that the lawyer or the doctor was his childhood friend, that they met unexpectedly, and that the friend wanted to help.  In reality, the guy is off meeting with the KGB and taking you for a ride.  These guys deserve to have their faces smashed in and kicked out of the house.”
We finished drinking our tea. Boris took what remained of the magazine and lay down on the bunk.  Thoughts rushed at me like wolves.

Chapter 5
Shurik

After the morning of August 18th, I was completely cut off from what was going on.  Did they arrest my wife?  Did they arrest anyone else?  Would the arrests continue?  The names and faces of the people who could be arrested flashed before me. I felt like boiling water had been poured over me.  “Maybe they arrested Zina,” I thought.  “Maybe she’s somewhere here in prison.” I did not realize that I had gotten up from the bunk and had begun pacing the cell.
“Do they torture women with chemicals?” I asked Boris.
“Sure they do!” answered Boris without looking up from the magazine.  “Not all of them, but they do it.”
“What if they arrest a woman who’s nursing a baby?  What happens to the baby?” 
“Nothing.  The baby stays in the cell with her until it’s a year old.  When it’s a year old, they put it in a special home for children, a home for kids who have parents in prison.  They might give it to relatives.
“Are mothers and babies in special cells?
No, they’re in regular cells with everybody else.  The baby sleeps on a bunk with the mother.
“How can that be?  There’s so much smoke in the cells.  It’s dangerous for a baby.”
“Sure there’s smoke – and fleas, and cockroaches, and bed-bugs.”
“The floors are cement.  The child might not survive.”
“What a naive guy you are!  Of course, the child might not survive.  Every second prisoner on his second walk has tuberculosis.  You think a baby will survive that?”
I was shocked by his reply.  I imagined Zina and our newborn daughter in a cell like the one I was in.   I looked at my mattress and wondered if they would make them sleep on the same kind of bunk, on the same kind of mattresses.  Would they feed them the same slop we were eating?  I wondered about the other children, wondered where they were.  Did they give them to my mother or send them to some children’s home?
I paced the cell like a caged animal – three steps forward, three steps back, three steps forward.  With frightening clarity, I pictured what could have happened to my family.  What was even clearer to me was the knowledge that I had no way to help them.
“Only God can help,” I thought to myself.  I hardly noticed that my worry had turned to prayer.  I continued to pace the cell without realizing what I was doing.  I prayed for Zina, for each of the children, and for the people who could be arrested.”
“Hey, are you revving up for a trip into space? Getting ready for take-off?  Why are you running around the cell?”  Boris asked grinning at me.
“You know, my wife has been helping me.  The KGB got interested in her several times. She’s been arrested a few times like me but they let her go.  Now that I’ve been  arrested, I think she might be here somewhere too. We have six children.  Our youngest daughter was born a week before I was arrested.”
Boris jumped up from his bunk and began to pace the cell.
“What a mess!  What a mess!  Things look dark for you, but whether you worry about it or not, there’s nothing you can do.  Try not to think about the bad things or you’ll go crazy.  Think about something good.  Imagine that everything is fine with your wife and children.  You have a mother, relatives.  Besides, you are a believer.  I hear they help each other.  Anyway, arresting a mother with six children, especially a newborn…I don’t think Hitler would have done that.  Forget it. Get it out of your head. You’re the one who started all these thoughts.  I saw how you started building up speed.”
The thought occurred to me that God must have sent this man.  We paced the cell together and he continued calming me down.
Just then, another prisoner was brought into the cell.
“Where are you from?  Just arrived?”  asked Boris.
“No, transferred from the second bloc.”
“Why so late? It’s almost time for lights out.”
“ I was in interrogation all day.  They ransacked our cell.  When I got back from interrogation, my mattress was in the corridor.  My name is Shurik.”  He threw his mattress on a top bunk, climbed up, and ignored us.  We quickly forgot about him.
During the morning check, Shurik asked the dubak for a needle and thread.
“Let’s have some tea, okay?” suggested Boris.  “Help make the kindling.”
“I’m going to sew,” remarked Shurik from the bunk.  I began helping Boris and in a short time, the tea was ready. “Come on, Shurik, climb down, let’s have some tea!” said Boris and then suddenly stopped speaking.  His eyes widened and he almost dropped his cup of tea.  “Look!” he cried.  “Shurik’s gone crazy.” 
I looked at Shurik and could not believe my eyes.  His mouth was sewn together with thick, bloody threads.  Boris put his cup under the bunk, raced to the door, and began kicking it with his foot.
A minute later, the feeding trough opened.  A dubak came to check on the noise.
“What’s all the noise about?” he shouted.
“Call the doctor.  A guy’s gone crazy here.”
“Who’s gone crazy?  You, maybe?”
The dubak glanced around the cell.  His gaze stopped at Shurik’s lips.  Forgetting to close the feeding trough, he cursed, turned around, and ran down the corridor. 
Unperturbed, Shurik stayed seated on the bunk with his legs tucked under him.  He was calm but his eyes were staring at one spot, at the bridge of his nose.  Within a short time, the doctor and the bloc warden arrived.  “Hey you, psycho, get down from the bunk,” shouted the doctor.  Shurik made no response.
“You have to cut the thread!” advised the bloc warden. “Do you think I don’t know that?  He’ll kick me in the face with his foot,” responded the doctor. Turning to us, the doctor ordered, “Hey you, get him down!”
We tried persuading Shurik to climb down from the bunk.  Shurik was obedient and climbed down.
“Hey psycho, come over here!” shouted the doctor again.
“What do you mean, come over here?” contradicted the bloc warden. “You walk over to him and cut the thread so his mouth doesn’t get cut up more. He has to answer the interrogator’s questions.  How’s he going to talk with those lips?”
The doctor walked over to him and began cutting the threads.  Shurik did not resist.  He was calm.  When he finished cutting the threads, the doctor asked Shurik why he had sewed his mouth?”
“Peter told me to.”
“What Peter?”
“My brother.”
“Where is he?  How could he tell you what to do?”
“He rode to me on a horse with six hooves.”
“Where did he come from?” 
“From logging trees.  He was killed two years ago by a cable.”
“Everything is clear,” said the doctor, addressing the bloc warden, “Send him to the nut-house for evaluation.” They led Shurik away.
“Shurik was in interrogation all day yesterday,” remarked Boris. “They probably beat him and forced him to confess to somebody else’s crime.  That happens when the son of some big Communist boss commits a crime. That kind of guy doesn’t get arrested.  The cops pin the crime on somebody else, somebody like Shurik.  He sewed his mouth shut so he wouldn’t have to talk to the interrogator.  I don’t think he’s faking it.  He just couldn’t take it and went crazy.” 

Chapter 6
Witness for Christ

Several days later, our cell was completely full.  At night, the cement floor was covered with mattresses.  In the morning, the mattresses were gathered and rolled up.  During the day, some of us sat on our mattresses, some of us on the bunks.  We all took turns walking around the cells for exercise, two by two.  
September had come and it was not as hot as before but it was still stuffy in the cell.  The metal grating on the windows did not allow the air to circulate.  In addition, everyone smoked tobacco and the blue tobacco smoke hung in the air.  The smell of the smoke was mixed with the smell of unwashed, human bodies, dirty clothing, carbolic acid, and other disgusting odors.  Added to all of this was the smell of the toilet.
Once a day, we were taken out for exercise.  After being in the smelly cell so long, we felt dizzy in the fresh air.  The ‘exercise yard’ was located on the prison roof.  There were more cells there, just like the ones inside the prison but without roofs.  The roofs of the cells had been replaced with iron bars and barbed wire. When the weather was good, our exercise lasted fifteen or twenty minutes but when the weather was bad, when it was raining or cold, we were kept outside for an hour.
When we got back to the cell after exercise, no one wanted to be the first one in.  Everyone wanted just one more minute away from the foul smell.  While we were still out in the corridor, we took a deep breath.  Then, wondering how anyone could stand it, we entered the cell.  Half an hour later, we were resigned to it.  After exercise, everyone became more pensive and gloomy, remembering life on the outside.
One time, when we had returned from exercise, Boris remarked, “Hey brothers, why get so depressed?  If we keep this up, we will all go crazy.  Why don’t we tell each other stories about ourselves.  You can tell lies, but it has to be funny.”
“I’ll tell a story,” said Victor, a young man about twenty years old, from a remote village in the Far East.  “I’m really from Moscow,” he began.  “Well, I was running on this path in the park.  I was always working out, jogging.  Well, anyway, I’m jogging and I run past somebody who looks familiar.  I stopped.  I look back and think, “Who’s that guy?”  He stops too, looks at me, and starts munching a turnover.  Then he drops his turnover, bends down to pick it up again, and his jaw drops open. Then I recognize him.  Why, it’s Lennie Breshnev!  “Hi Lennie,” I say.  “Hi,” he answers back.  Then he stuffs his turnover back in his mouth and starts chewing again.
“You mean, he picked it up from the ground and put it in his mouth?” asked one prisoner in all seriousness.
“Yeah!  He picked it up, chewed it, and then looked at me and said, ‘austerity economics!’”
The prisoners took turns telling tall tales, inventing funny stories, and interspersing them with crude profanities.  Outside of prison, the stories might have made them laugh but now their laughter was empty.  I pitied them.
“If you want, I could tell you about God,” I offered.
“Only if it’s interesting!” someone remarked. “Anyway, I don’t think God exists.  If there were a God, there wouldn’t be so much injustice in the world.  If there is a God at all, then He’s an evil God.”
Someone else added,  “I don’t know if there’s a God or not either,” remarked another prisoner, “but there’s a power of evil for sure.  I’ve seen it myself.”
“So you say God is evil?” I responded.  “I’ll tell you the story of Christ and you can decide if God is evil or not.”
I began telling them how Christ was born, how He was pursued from the very beginning, and how they wanted to kill Him.  I told them that He did not have any money, no house, and that He walked from city to city, and from village to village, teaching the people.  I told them how He went hungry and without sleep, how He had no place to lay His head, how He slept wherever he could, and spent the night wherever someone happened to offer Him and his apostles a place. I told them that He never shunned anyone, that He accepted everybody, preached to everyone, and healed the sick.  I told them about his good works and, even if it sounded strange, how He was crucified for that.
Everyone was silent.  My story made an impression on them.  No one had ever read the Bible and no one knew anything about God.
“It seems like Christ was as miserable as we are.  He sure suffered!” remarked Boris.  “Why don’t you tell us about God every night.”
The next morning, a dubak opened the feeding trough and shouted:  “Perchatkin, to the door, no belongings!”

Chapter 7
The Snitch

“So we meet again!” said special investigator Lieutenant-colonel Kuzmin.  He was the same man who had questioned me about the Sharansky case two year earlier.  “You’ve fooled us for a long time but you won’t get away with it this time.  Let’s start the questioning from the last incident and then go deeper.”
Kuzmin opened a folder and took out a piece of paper.  I recognized it immediately. It was my appeal to the United States’ Congress, which I had sent off in April of that year.  In the appeal, I had demonstrated that Soviet law has no provision for freedom of religion in the USSR.  Kuzmin read the appeal and said, “Right now, I’m not going to ask you why you wrote this.  It’s your signature here.  You signed it as the secretary of the Council of Churches.  Do you admit that this is your signature, that this is your appeal?  Maybe someone else wrote it and you only signed your name?  Tell me everything you know about how this appeal was prepared.  I’m interested in the technical side of it now.”
I did not rush to answer.  I understood that he was weaving a net around me.  The gravest danger was implicating someone in it with me.
“I composed the appeal by myself.  I typed it and sent it to the West.”
“Is that your final answer?  Maybe you would like to think about it some more.  I’m writing this all down.”
“I didn’t need anyone’s help.  I composed it, typed it, and sent off all the papers by myself.”
“I know you want to protect your friends.  That’s understandable but you Christians aren’t supposed to tell lies.  Your statement has a discrepancy.  We confiscated this paper from Vitaliy Istomin in Moscow.”  He took out a notebook.  “We confiscated this notebook when we searched the home of your friend Sergey Onischenko.  It’s a rough draft of your appeal.  The three of you are in this together.  Onischenko wrote it,  you signed your name, and Istomin forwarded it to the West.  Take a look at the expert’s report.”
“I’m the one who wrote it!”
“Okay, we’re calling in another expert. His report will be on my desk in half an hour.”

I was escorted back to the cell.  I lay down on the bunk, put my hands under my head, and began to think.  Onischenko had probably been arrested too.  Istomin was probably here somewhere.  Could they really have been arrested for this?  There was no other evidence against them – only the appeal and the rough draft.  I had dictated the appeal to Sergey, who wrote it down.  Vitaliy had a copy of the appeal we sent.  Vitaliy and Sergey had probably been arrested as a scare tactic to force them to testify against me, but these people did not scare easily.  The KGB was just trying to get me to put the blame on them, to drag them into it.
I began thinking about the laws the KGB could use against me.  I had been charged with violating two laws: Article 190, Section One and Article 70.  A conviction on the first charge would give me three years in prison. Article 70 would give me seven years.  ‘If they convict me on Article 70,” I worried,” I will be forty-one years old when I get out.  Zina will be thirty-eight.  I began calculating how old each child would be.
My father had died when I was six years old and I tried remembering what he looked like.  I could hardly remember.  I went on thinking.  “My oldest son is nine years old now.  He will remember me but the younger ones will forget.” I went on thinking and thinking.  I imagined several variations of my return home to my family after seven years.  Then, a guard’s voice interrupted my thoughts:  “Perchatkin, to the door, for interrogation!”

“Now you are looking at the opinions from two different experts.  They both agree that this is Anischenko’s handwriting.  So, who really wrote this appeal? You or Anischenko?  Anischenko already confessed he wrote it.” 
“No, he didn’t write it.  I did!  It’s my signature there.  I don’t want to talk about the rough draft anymore.  You can’t use the rough draft as evidence.”

A few hours later, I was back in cell fifty-three, forcing myself to eat cold slop.  I hardly noticed when a young man, about twenty-five years old, sat down by me.  His name was Andrey Koval.  By his own admission, he was an apartment thief.  He admitted to breaking into more than forty apartments.
“Were you in interrogation?”
“Yeah, interrogation.” 
“Nasty interrogator?”
“Not bad, the usual.”
“What are you in for?  What are they trying to get you for?”
“Bad handwriting,” I answered, remembering Boris’ advice.
“What do the experts say?”
“What experts?”
“The handwriting experts.  You said you’re in here for bad handwriting.”
I quickly realized he was a snitch.  I talked to Boris about it later.
“Don’t tell him anything else but don’t let him catch on,” Boris advised me. “We need to check him out.”
The next morning, Andrey was called out of the cell.  After he had left, Boris announced:  “Now I’m going to climb on my ‘horse’ and take a ride around the prison.” 
He wrote a note, tied it to the nail, pushed it through the grating, and let it down to the first floor. “Never check out informers by telephone,” he instructed me. “Always use the ‘horse’.  Our ‘horse’ is trotting around the first floor now, but we’ve got to get another ‘horse’ to the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth floors.”
He walked to the telephone.  “Eight-five, eight-five, come in please,” he shouted.  “Send your ‘horse’ to five-three.”  
A minute later, he was tying a note on the ‘horse’ for the third floor.  “Now this ‘horse’ can make it up to the sixth floor and all around the prison.”
After lunch, a ‘horse’ arrived with a note reading:  “Andrey Koval was convicted for narcotics.  He’s from Nahodka.  He used to be a sailor.”
There was no more information about him, but we already had enough.  Convicted prisoners were never put in the same cell with people still under investigation unless they were informers.  Andrey was not a thief as he had said.  He was a drug dealer.
Boris let everyone in the cell know that we had a snitch.  He showed them the proof.
“Throw the ‘towel’ on him, beat him up, and ‘put him on his skis,’” said Anatoly, a prisoner who had served time before.  
“What are ‘towels’ and ‘skis’?” I asked.
Boris explained it to me.  You make a braid from wet strips of towel.  You throw it over his head from behind, tie it into a knot, and pull hard.  Everything happens fast.  If you want to kill him, you push him under the bunk, and he strangles because there’s no way he can untie the knot.   If you only want to teach him a lesson, you loosen the knot before he strangles.  You let him regain consciousness and then you tighten it again. Putting somebody on ‘skis’ means forcing him to make a run for it during a search.  The dubaks start beating him, trying to force him back in the cell, but when he refuses to go back, they put him in a cell with other exposed snitches.  We call those cells “hurt feelings” cells.
“I’m against torturing him.  I’m against violence in general.”
“According to prison law, we don’t have the right to keep him here.  If you insist, we can just put him on his ‘skis’ without beating him up. “
They brought Andrey back that evening.  He was carrying five packs of cigarettes. “I got these cigarettes in the waiting room.  I stole them from a guy who came in under guard,” explained Andrey.
“Sit down, let’s talk,” said Boris.  ‘You’ve been here a while and we haven’t got acquainted yet. How long have you been in prison?”
“About a month.”
“What cell were you in before?”
“In one-thirty-nine.”
“Have you ever been in the second bloc?”
“No way! How could I?  I’ve only been here a month.”
“What are you in for?  What kind of charges?”
“I already told you.  I robbed more than forty apartments.”
“Did you ever deal narcotics?”
Right then, Andrey began to fidget.  His eyes darted from place to place.  He began offering everyone cigarettes.  Not paying any attention, Boris asked him again,  “Were you ever in block two, in house two-eight-seven?”
“Hey, brothers, what are you taking me for?  I’ve never been in the second bloc.”
Anatoly took off his shoe and hit Andrey on the head. Anatoly was losing patience.  “You bastard!  You’ve been here before.  You’ve been drifting around here for a year.  How dare you call us brothers.  The only brothers you’ve got are the bugs.  There’s a search starting now, so get on you ‘skis’ and take off down the corridor!”
“Okay, I know what you’re saying.  I’ll do anything, but don’t beat me!”
Anatoly pointed at me.  “Tell Boris thank you.”  Then turning to the other prisoners, he shouted.  “Hold me back, brothers or I’ll carve a swastika in his ass!” 

Kuzmin went on questioning me for two months but he did not find out a thing.  During that time, he put me in the ‘jar’ six times and had me tortured with chemicals once.  I found out later that Kuzmin was not especially cruel compared to other interrogators.  When the interrogations finally ended, Kuzmin even apologized.  “Forgive me,” he said.  “This is the first time I’ve picked on someone like you.  I have never had much to do with people like you.  I know you were victimized by Vasily Patrushev.  He’s a big, old wolf, who worked for Soviet intelligence and then sold out to the Americans.  He set you up, stuffed your head with his ideas, and now he’s sitting on the sidelines admiring his work.”

Chapter 8
The Beginning

I sat on the bunk and remembered my friends, Vasily Patrushev and Fyodor Sidenko.  Back in 1964, they were the first people who tried to get information to the West regarding the persecution of Christian believers in the USSR.  It all began when they got a hold of a copy of the “Declaration of Human Rights.”  After they read it, they decided that, come what may, they had to inform the West about what was happening to believers in the Soviet Union.
Vasily devised two different ways to get  information to the West.  The first way was to attach notes to rocks and throw them on board foreign ships in port.  The second way was to get Fyodor Sidenko a job as a plumber at the ‘Intourist’ hotel, where he could try to make contact with Russian speaking foreigners.
By the end of 1964, Fyodor discovered that the Japanese consul, Issida Issav, could speak Russian. He was living at ‘Intourist.’ Vasily and Fyodor implemented the second plan. They decided that Fyodor would create a plumbing ‘accident’ in the consul’s room when Issav was at home.  While doing the repairs, Vasiliy would try to talk to him.  
Fyodor climbed up into the attic and lowered a rope with a plug attached to it through the plumbing system until it reached the consul’s apartment.  He calculated it so that the plug would drop just below the toilet.  When the deed was done, he ran back to the workshop and waited for the repair call.
Twenty minutes later, the commotion began.  The consul’s room was flooding.  They called Fydor immediately and allowed him to do the repairs without the usual KGB supervision. While he was working, Fydor succeeded in talking to the consul, who agreed to pass documents to the United Nations.  How could Fyodor have known that the room was bugged?
The mission failed.  Vasily and Fyodor were arrested.  They were detained for investigation for a long time.  Then they were put in a psychiatric hospital, beaten, and pressured to name their accomplices.  Two different times, they brought Fyodor out into the courtyard and put him in front of a firing squad, but they never found out a thing.  Fyodor got four years in a maximum-security prison and Vasily got three years.  They were sent to a camp for political prisoners, but the authorities made a big mistake when they sent them there.  In the camp, Vasily and Fyodor became acquainted with Alexander Ginsburg, one of the first political dissidents. After they were all released, Ginsburg helped them establish ties with the West.

After Fyodor Sidenko and Vasily Patrushev were arrested, the Nahodka church group divided into two camps.  One group, the majority, feared reprisals and decided it was wrong to protest government action against religious groups.  It was just politics.  They wanted to deny Fyodor and Vasily membership in the church because they had brought down the government’s wrath on all believers.  The believers had already suffered enough from court investigations.
Eight church members had been convicted during the previous four years.  Three sets of parents had been deprived of their parental rights for giving their children a religious education and five people were already in labor camps because of their religious activity.  Fyodor and Vasily had tried to convey information about the situation to the West.  They had wanted to defend the church somehow, to help the believers in prison but they ended up being condemned by the authorities and by their own people as well. 
There was only a small group of people, who supported Fyodor and Vasily.  I was part of that group. I was twenty years old when Vasily was released.  I was drawn to him, drawn by his knowledge of the Bible and by his courageous words and deeds.  Vasily noticed me and began inviting me to his home.  He became my spiritual mentor.
Sometime in 1975, as Vasily and I were walking home from a Sunday service and talking about the sermons, we came to a crossroads where we had to go our separate ways. Vasily looked me straight in the eye and I knew he wanted to tell me something important.  I knew what he was going to say because I had waited for this conversation a long time.
“Do you know how the spring works in the breech of a gun?” Vasily asked me.  “It is held in place until the right moment.  When that moment comes, it springs forward and propels the shot. Circumstances are holding us back too.  The government is trying to break us, but we have to be like gun springs, holding back, unnoticed, neither breaking nor growing rusty.  When the right moment comes, we have to spring forward and provide the energy to fire the shot.  The moment has arrived.  The Communists just signed the Helsinki Accord but they are deceiving the whole world again.  International law gives us freedom of religion, but where is the freedom when a thousand churches are considered illegal and the majority of our brothers are in prison.  International law gives us freedom but we still have to fight for it.  I think there will still be more victims in this fight.  Boris, if you ever get the chance to suffer for Christ in this fight, take it!  Not everyone gets the chance.  Remember: ‘There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for his friends.’ ”

I was so immersed in thinking about my friends that I hardly heard the cell door open to admit the old man, who had been my first escort into prison.  I was startled when he commanded: “Hands behind your back! If you make a step to the right or to the left, I’ll shoot without warning!”  We walked the same route as before.  When the corridor ended, we walked out the door into the courtyard.  Beyond the courtyard, about forty-five feet from the prison entrance, a car was waiting.
In spite of the fact that there was no place to run, the old man was upset because the car was so far away.  He was always upset when the driver parked there and always criticized him.  The young guard found it very funny.  When we stepped onto the cement path in the courtyard, the young guard teased the old man saying:  “How about me pushing this prisoner to the side?  You can conclude he’s trying to escape and shoot him.”
“Shut up, stupid!” shouted the old man.  “We’re on duty.  Get serious.”
They put me in the car and brought me to the Vladivostok KGB prison, which was located about a mile and a half from KGB headquarters.  I looked out the car window.  The trees were covered with gold leaves already starting to fall.  Yellow, red, and dark crimson leaves whirled in the air and fell to the ground and onto the paths.  There were people walking on the sidewalks.  I envied them.  Some of the people walked slowly, some hurried, but no one was chasing them and ordering them to put their hands behind their backs.
“Hands behind your back!” ordered the old man.  As if waking from a dream, I heard his voice.  He had already opened the car door.
We stood in the courtyard of the KGB prison, where my escorts handed me over to the prison staff. My guards signed me over and the other guards signed me in. They brought me to a holding cell, which already contained ten people.  This was the assembly point for people who had just been arrested or who were in route from one prison to another. It was a good place to catch up on the news and to try getting a note to the outside.

Chapter 9
The ‘Jar’

They did not keep me in the holding cell long.  The door opened and they called out my name.  They put me in the ‘jar,’ an enclosed space similar to a closet, built into the wall, where a person can only stand up or sit. I don’t know why they called it the ‘jar.’  It was more like a coffin.  Inside, it was lined with metal and studded with nails on all four sides. It had a cement floor and was so dark that a person’s eyes could never adjust.  After a few hours in the ‘jar,’ a person starts feeling the lack of oxygen but if he starts screaming, the guards open the door and beat him with a spiked club.  Altogether, I spent more than two hundred hours in these ‘jars.’
When you enter the ‘jar,’ you are usually facing the back wall.  The door is slammed shut and it is pitch dark.  It does not make any difference if you stand with your face to the back or to the door, but by some instinct, you turn to face the door.  You turn around slowly, carefully, trying not to scratch yourself on the metal or on the nail studded walls. When you get completely turned around, it seems more normal.  Now the most important thing is to figure out how to avoid leaning on the wall.  You put your weight on one foot.  When it gets tired, you put the weight on the other foot.  That only works for the first few hours.  Then your feet start getting tired and they feel like they are full of lead. They start swelling.
As I stood in the cramped, dark ‘jar,’ I was overcome with a keen awareness of my own helplessness.  I also became aware of the deep exhaustion caused by all the interrogation.  I had very little physical strength remaining.  Grief constricted my heart like a vice and, even though there was enough oxygen in the ‘hole,’ my lungs did not have enough air. I began to pray.  Gradually, my lungs began working more calmly and my blood seemed to be taking up more oxygen.  I began remembering the past once more.

It was August 1967 in Moscow when I first became acquainted with Alexander Ginsburg.  I climbed the stairs to the eighth floor and rang the bell.  His wife Arina opened the door.
“Hello.  My name is Boris.  Fyodor Sidenko and Vasily Patrushev sent me.”
“Hello.  You probably want to see Alex.  He’s not home right now but he’ll be back soon.  Come into the study.  There are books there.  You can read for a while if you want.”
I went into the study, where I saw a table, several chairs, and a sofa. Everything else was books.  The bookshelves reached the ceiling.  There were books piled on the floor.  I began looking through them and became so engrossed that I did not hear Alexander enter the room.
We introduced ourselves.  I told him that Fyodor and Vasily had sent me.  He raised a finger to his lips in warning and indicated that his apartment was being bugged.  At the same time, he handed me an erasable writing pad and talked about everyday banalities.  I had never seen a writing pad like that one.  You lift the page and everything is erased. I wrote that I had come on behalf of five hundred and twenty people who wanted to emigrate. 
“I don’t have anything to do with emigration,” he wrote back,  “but I’m interested in why five hundred and twenty people would want to leave.”
Ginsburg recommended that I meet with Anatolyy Sharavsky* and Yury Orlov,**  who would be interested too. We continued writing on the pad, but at the same time Ginsburg chattered aloud about how he was working in a store right now, how he had previously worked as Solzhenitzin’s secretary, and how he had now been invited to become Sakharov’s secretary.  Alexander’s words were designed for the bugging devices. 
“How long will you be in Moscow?” wrote Alexander.
“Until I get everything done.”
“Let’s go to Orlov’s place,” wrote Alexander.  “Sharovsky will be there today.  Leave your papers here.  Don’t take anything with you.  You will be tailed as soon as you leave the apartment.  We’ve been tailed ever since we founded the ‘Helsinki’ group.” As soon as Alexander finished writing, he lifted the page and everything was erased.
After having something to eat, we set off for Orlov’s apartment.  It was a ten- minute walk from Alexander’s.  Professor Orlov was at home alone.  His apartment was similar to Alexander’s.  Everywhere you looked, there were books and more books.  Orlov gave us the same kind of writing pad we had used at Alexander’s.  Fortunately, Orlov had several of them.  We began our conference.

At that time in Russian history, only Jews and ethnic Germans were being allowed to leave Russia for their historic homeland. Five hundred and twenty Pentecostals, who wanted to leave the Soviet Union, was something highly unusual.  A move like that would constitute emigration for ideological reasons!  Orlov wanted to know the reasons compelling us to consider such a desperate step, especially when there was no way of knowing how it would turn out.  He asked me to explain in more detail.
As I began writing, Anatoly Sharovsky arrived.  When all three of them had read what I wrote, Anatoly was the most interested.  He suggested we meet separately.
We met in the park.  We sat down on a bench and Anatoly began telling me a little bit about the history of Jewish emigration to Israel.  “Before Jewish emigration even got started,” he explained, “it took a lot of work.  There were many victims.  Even now, the movement is not as strong as it should be.  They are still not letting many Jews go.  When we first announced our intention to leave for Israel, many of us lost our jobs.  We were refused exit visas to Israel and forced to stay in the USSR.  We could not get jobs in our fields. They fabricated criminal charges against anyone actively seeking to leave or helping other people to leave.
Unlike the Jews, you Pentecostals are ethnic Russians.  It’s bad enough for you to reject Communist ideology and to ignore Russian laws, but you are even daring to complain about those laws.  For the Communists, your biggest crime is deciding to leave and to escape Russian laws.  Do you know what lies ahead of you?  You must realize that you have no support abroad.  We have the support of the international Jewish community, but even that is not always enough.  I think you need to build worldwide support in the Christian community.  To do this, you can keep in constant touch with us but you also need to develop your own contacts with foreign journalists and diplomats.  You cannot remain silent.  You must tell the whole world what is happening to you.  You have hard, dangerous work ahead of you.”
Just then, we heard a rustling sound behind us.  We glanced around and saw a woman standing about six feet from us.  We stood up, walked further down the path, and found another comfortable place. We sat down on a bench.
“There’s something wrong.  I think someone is listening in,” remarked Anatoly.  He stood up abruptly and walked behind the bench where he discovered the same woman crouching behind us in the bushes. She was carrying a purse and what appeared to be a tape recorder.  Anatoly talked to her, trying to make her feel ashamed of herself but she looked at him with an expression of disdain and walked away.
Later that day, a policeman stopped me. “Your documents!” he demanded. I gave him my passport.  He opened it, looked at it, and said,  “Come to the police department with me.  It’s nearby.” 
At the police department, they made copies of everything in my passport.  They told me I resembled a criminal they were looking for but it had been a mistake.  They let me go.

On the next day, the four of us met again, this time in the forest where no one would bother us.  The question remained: “Where to begin?”
I realized we had to begin exactly where Vasily and Fyodor had begun – by gathering information about the persecution of Christian believers and getting that information to the West. My new acquaintances told me I needed to collect biographical information about everyone wanting to emigrate for religious reasons.  We needed to explain the reasons for taking such a step.
I flew home that day on an evening flight.  
A month and a half later, we had gathered all the biographical information.  We began careful preparations for another trip to Moscow.  We had not forgotten that eleven years earlier Vasily and Fydor had served time in prison for carrying this kind of material.  We had to transport it some way that guaranteed it would not fall into the hands of the authorities.
I decided to take Zina and our three-year-old son with me to Moscow.  We decided not to fly there directly but to buy tickets to Leningrad.  From there, we made it to Moscow with no problems.  
We stayed in Moscow two days.  On the second day, Alexander organized a meeting with a British correspondent from the BBC.  He arranged a press conference for the twenty-first of November regarding the persecution of Pentecostal Christians in the USSR.  Vasily Patrushev and Valentin Burlachenko accompanied me. 
The press conference was held in the apartment of Ludmilla Alekseevna, a member of the ‘Helsinki’ group.  I met Sakharov for the first time there. Vasili and I both spoke at the press conference. When we got home, we discovered that the ‘Voice of America’ had already broadcast our press conference and our statements.  A short time later, the ‘Helsinki’ group sent its representative, Lidia Voronina, to investigate the situation of Christian believers.
The authorities had not expected this turn of events.  They were accustomed to acting without taking anyone or anything into consideration. We had always kept silent but now our silence had ended.  This disturbed them.
When Lidia Voronina returned to Moscow, the authorities took away her Russian citizenship and deported her.  Ludmilla Alexeevna was also deported.
In 1977, after our church’s Christmas celebrations, I flew to Moscow again to strengthen our existing ties and to find new people to help us.  I joined the ‘Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights in the USSR’, a group organized by Gleb Yakunin.
When I returned to Nahodka, our Pentecostal Church had split, just as it had done twenty years earlier.  This time, the majority of members had decided to actively seek religious freedom.  
We openly announced our intentions to the state authorities and to the ‘puppet’ church leaders sent by the government.  We told them that if the Soviet Union refused to give us freedom of religion, we wanted to emigrate.  We wrote a group statement and each of us sent letters to the Soviets indicating we could no longer tolerate the prevailing situation. A week later, the ‘Voice of America’ reported the arrest of Alexander Ginsburg.  After yet another week, it reported the arrest of Yury Orlov.
After our church divided and a new one was formed, we had new concerns.  We needed to continue our human rights campaign but we also needed to tend to our spiritual work.  There were more than three hundred united members.  For about two months, we concentrated on organizing the church.  We organized a choir and services for the children and young people.  Fyodor Sidenko was sent to Starotitarovka in the Krasnodar region to help organize a religious rights movement among Pentecostals like the one we had in Nahodka.  A man named Goretoi had already started putting together such a campaign there.
During the first part of May, I was in Moscow again.  As soon as I arrived, I went to see Anatoly Sharovsky.  We talked almost all night.  Anatoly told me he was being watched more than ever.  He was depressed and complained about having insomnia from the constant stress.  He was arrested the next day.
Arrest followed arrest.  Within a short time, more than half the members of the ‘Helsinki’ group were arrested.  We knew that the arrests would reach Nahodka soon.  We expected them with each new day. 
 April passed stressfully.  Then May arrived and the earth greened and bloomed.  As if waking from winter sleep, spring came alive and our hopes rebounded.  Somehow, we would be able to leave for a free country, where we would no longer be persecuted for our religious beliefs.
Then, unexpectedly, seventy families from our church received official invitations from American Christians.  Word spread quickly.  The ‘Voice of America’ began regular broadcasts about the plight of Pentecostals in the Far East.  Everyone in the Soviet Union knew something unusual was happening in Nahokda.  Everyone was waiting to see what would happen.  Most people thought that what we were doing was crazy. They thought we were doomed.
In spite of it all, we had received invitations to the United States! We finally had some results.  We were so happy, it was like a holiday.  To celebrate the occasion, we organized a picnic on a riverbank, far away from the city.  We fished, built a campfire, and cooked fish soup…. 

That was long ago. Now, I was still locked in the ‘jar’ remembering it all.  The thought of fish soup had suddenly made me feel hungry.  I started thinking about the prison food, especially the fish soup they often served us at supper.  It was always made from scraps already starting to spoil.  Sometimes, they gave us soup made from some inexpensive grain and a few pieces of potato.  Breakfast and supper were usually about five of six spoonfuls of porridge cooked in water without butter.  Sometimes, they served boiled cabbage with a few pieces of potato.  The bread was never fully baked so, to make it more edible, we let it dry into crusts.   Once a week, usually on Saturdays, they gave us pea soup, and on Wednesdays, pea porridge.  This was a delicacy in prison.  Today was Wednesday!
The door of the ‘jar’ opened.  “Get out!” ordered the dubak.  “We have to get you back to Vladivostok prison in time for supper.”  By the time they got me in the car, drove me across the city to the prison, and got me back to my cell, supper was long past.  Everyone was sleeping.  Only Boris was awake, sitting on his bunk.
“Well, finally!  Where have you been?”
“In the ‘jar.’”
Boris nodded his head.  “I saved you some porridge. It’s pea porridge today.  Go ahead, eat.”
I always fell asleep immediately in prison.  I am still amazed that I did not suffer from insomnia when I was under so much emotional stress.  The worst time for me was in the morning when I first woke up, usually about ten or fifteen minutes before the wake-up siren.  Halfway between sleep and waking, with my eyes still closed, I would wonder: “Maybe I’m dreaming.  Maybe I’ll be at home when I open my eyes.”  The prison siren always brought me back to reality.
Breakfast always arrived fifteen minutes after the wake-up siren.  Fifteen minutes later, the guard made his round of cells announcing who is being transferred, who is summoned to interrogation, and who is going to court.
“Perchatkin, without your belonging!” shouted the guard.  He ordered me to interrogation at the KGB prison again. Several minutes later, the KGB car was speeding me through the streets of Vladivostok again.  
      
Chapter 10
In Satan’s Claws

“Well, now you get to defend yourself!”  Istomin told me in greeting.  “Today I’m interested in the appeal you sent to the Belgrade Conference, the telegram you sent to the president of the USA but, most important, I want to know about the theft of an official notebook belonging to one of our agents in Nahodka.  I advise you to confess your anti-government, criminal activities voluntarily.”
I felt confused.  How did they find out about the notebook?  They could not possibly have such sophisticated bugging devices!  How much did they know?  I kept myself under control by sheer will.  I had to be calm.
“I’m the one who composed the appeal and sent it to the Belgrade Conference. I sent the telegram too, but this is the first time I’ve heard anything about a notebook.  You might as well be telling me I stole an atomic bomb, make me defend myself, and prove I didn’t do it.  By law, you are supposed to charge me and produce evidence before I have to defend myself.  If you are such an experienced investigator, why do you already have me categorized me as a criminal?  The court is supposed to decide whether I’m a criminal or not – not you. You are making yourself more important than the court.  You have already judged me and decided that I’m a criminal.”
“Stop grasping at straws!” answered the interrogator angrily.  “I’m proceeding according to law.  What I suggested is within the bounds of criminal procedure.”
I realized they had no evidence regarding the notebook and continued to talk back.  “During Stalin’s time, people were advised to be shot voluntarily, to be hung voluntarily, and now you’re trying to get me to admit voluntarily that I’m a criminal.”
“We’re not getting anywhere this way!  Don’t get so upset.  Relax!  Have some tea.  Listen to some music.  I’m like you. I don’t smoke.  I only drink a little coffee but I like strong tea when I have a lot of work to do.  You people are stubborn, but interesting.  I want you to know that I got back from Perm two months ago after spending four months there breaking up an underground group of students.  Imagine the shock in Moscow – a democratic group in Perm!  I was immediately sent to Perm from Moscow.  The students were just playing around with politics.  They had invented some rules, issued some membership cards.  They were all arrested.  I thought the leaders would get two or three years for all the nonsense and that the others would get off, but they each got five to seven years.”
He turned on the tape player, a piece by Visotsky.  “Are you familiar with Visotsky?”
“No.”
“He’s one of your kind of people.  You all stick together.  You all have the same ideas.  By the way, I investigated his case.  Only his death saved him from a prison camp.
“Maybe you helped him avoid prison camp?”
“That’s logical from your point of view.”
At that moment, his assistant, Captain Ovinchuk, brought in the tea.  I refused it.  Istomin sipped his tea, looked through some papers, and said, “ It seems your brothers have testified against you.  You gave them one copy of the appeal, which they signed, but then you substituted a different appeal, one with different contents, and sent it to the Belgrade Conference.  This was a direct, anti-Soviet act.  If your friends had known what you intended to do, they never would have signed.  You deceived them.”
“I don’t believe you.  You’re making it up.  Let me see their testimony.”
“Sorry, you can see it only after the investigation is finished but I can show you a few excerpts now.  It might bring you to your senses.”
“In that case, I don’t want to talk about that subject until I’ve had a chance to confront the people you say have testified against me.”
“All right!” said Istomin.  He called the guards.  “Take him back to Vladivostok prison immediately,” he ordered.
After interrogation, I was usually put in a cell in the KGB prison and then transported back to Vladivostok prison when it was convenient for the guards.  This time, I was taken directly to the prison and put in the ‘jar.’  Just as before, I slowly and carefully turned around and stood facing the door.  “Who could have testified against me?” I wondered.  Once more, I began remembering everything that had happened.
I remembered the official invitations some of our church members received from America.  I remembered how other churches from all over the Soviet Union began contacting us.  The Church Council decided to send Vladimir Stepanov and me to Moscow to meet with representatives from other churches and to plan our further activities. We were also asked to gather information about the plight of believers in other parts of the Soviet Union and to find people who could keep us informed about what was happening.
Two weeks later, we presented our information at a press conference, which was held at General Grigorenko’s apartment.  I remember this press conference in particular because I met the writer Geli Snegirov there for the first time.  He gave me a copy of his most recent book and autographed it with the words “Don’t be afraid!”  I will remember the words he spoke at the press conference for the rest of my life.  “The less people are afraid, the sooner this regime will end.  It is all based on fear, and if you take away the fear, there’s no regime left.”  Geli Snegirov died in prison six months later.
Remembering his death, I also began recalling a prophecy spoken to me when I was sixteen years old: *  “You will be an instrument in My hands in delivering My people but I will lead you through a path of fire.”  The prophecy seemed to assure me that I would survive but that the path would be very difficult.  The ‘path of fire’ was certainly at hand but I had only taken a few steps.  The worst was yet to come. 
Much to my amazement, the ‘jar’ door opened.  For some reason, the bathhouse attendant nicknamed Vova 202 was standing there.  He was one of the people who administered chemical torture.  If you ever happened to meet him on the street, it would never occur to you that he spent almost every day torturing people with chemicals. On the street, he smiled the same way he did when he watched prisoners being tortured.  He even smiled when people fainted or went crazy from his torture.  He always smiled.
Vova had already heard about me but he had never had the opportunity to talk to me alone.  It was impossible to talk when witnesses were present.  Everyone fears each other.  Everybody turns each other in.  Now Vova’s chance had come.  He led me through the prison passageways.
“Why do they keep taking you to the KGB?  I hear you are a CIA agent.  You probably have a lot of money.  Do you get good pay?  Do you have a hundred thousand?”
I decided to string him along.  “I have a little money.”
“Where do you keep it?  In a Swiss bank?”
“Where else?”  Of course, in a Swiss bank.”  If you behave yourself, I’ll slip you twenty thousand dollars.”
“Wow!” cried Vova.  “For that amount, I’ll take you to the shower everyday. For that kind of money, you could buy the whole prison.”
“I’m on the KGB list.”
“You could buy the KGB too!”
Vova brought me to the bathhouse, where two men were waiting.  One of them held a bucket.  I suddenly realized why they had brought me here again.
“From cell fifty-three?” asked the bathhouse supervisor, a sergeant. There were rumors going round the prison that this man used to be an executioner who shot people.  Now he had become the supervisor of the prison bathhouse.
“Your cell has fleas so we have to disinfect you.”
“I don’t have any fleas.  There are no fleas in our cell.  If you’ve been ordered to torture me, you don’t have to invent such stupid reasons.”
“You talk too much!  Why are they messing with you?  I guess we didn’t shoot enough of you before.  We should have gotten rid of all of you so there wouldn’t be any memory of your faith.”
He looked at me with animal-like fury.  He was very short, with thinning, reddish hair, and bowed lips.  He seemed to be about sixty years old, already on a pension but continuing to do his favorite work.  In an effort to intimidate me even more, the little brute smiled evilly and said, “We used to take your people to Russian Island, shoot them, and dump them in the bay.  Boy, did the crabs multiply!  I still go fishing there!”
“Maybe he’s the one who shot my grandfather,” I thought to myself.
I wanted to grab the old man’s bucket of chemicals and throw it in his face. I overcame my urge only by the grace of God.  Had I done it, the dogs would have attacked me.  The dubaks always had guard dogs just in case someone, crazed with pain, tried to attack his tormentor.
“Do you think a time will come when you have to answer for all this?” I asked.
The executioner grew animated.  “Answer to whom?   You think I might answer to you?”
“Not to me.  You’re an old man and you don’t have long to live.”
I was amazed at his reaction.  He had obviously seen many deaths but he seemed to fear his own death.  I had enraged him by reminding him about his own death.
 Vova, who was standing behind him, gestured at me to shut up but the old man was already tearing at my shirt like a little demon and screaming: “I command you to get undressed.”
The buttons flew off my shirt and he began ripping off my clothing.  Within seconds, he was spreading the solution over me with zeal, while simultaneously sobbing and howling as if I had wounded him mortally.  I was even more convinced that he feared death very much.
When he finished spreading the satanic solution over me, he stood aside to admire his work.  Evidently, his favorite pastime was watching people suffer.
“No, Satan,” I resolved, “ I won’t give you any pleasure.  I refuse to writhe in pain, or scream, or even groan.  I intend to stand and look you in the eye.”
Involuntary convulsions surged through my body, but I stood praying to God that He give me the strength to endure.  The terrible pain filled my body and everything cried out from within me.  The pain constricted my consciousness like the tightening of a vice and drove out all sensation save for the pain and my desire to escape it.  Now, I was alone with the terrible, searing pain but I did not let out a sound.
“Are you ready to talk, to confess, or should I give you some more?” raved the executioner.
“Maybe that’s enough!” Vova told the old man.
“No, I think we need to add some more!’ shouted the executioner, staring at me in astonishment.
“He’ll go crazy or his heart will give out.  Then we’ll have to answer to the KGB.”
Vova’s words sobered the executioner immediately.  He seemed to fear the KGB as much as he feared death.
“All right, throw him in the shower but don’t turn on the water right away.”
The old man threw down the brush he had used to smear me and darted out of the bathhouse.  He got no pleasure that day.  Vova quickly opened the shower and turned on the water.  I had only taken a few steps when a new wave of pain hit me.  Maybe I had grown weak from just seeing the water.  
As my consciousness gradually cleared, I realized that I was standing under the shower but I did not know how I had gotten there.  Perhaps I had made it into the shower on my own or perhaps Vova had helped me.  As I stood washing off the solution, Vova looked into the shower room. “You can stay there an hour if you want.  Just knock when you get tired.”
As I stood under the warm stream of water, I slowly regained my senses.  I had no idea how long I had been standing there.  “It’s almost time for dinner,” I thought.  “I’m going to miss dinner again.”  I always felt hungry in prison.  I knocked for Vova and he peeked in.
“I’ve had enough,’ I said.  “It’s almost time for dinner.”
“Okay, come on out, but I’ve been ordered to take you back to the ‘jar.’  I don’t know if they’ll feed you there.”
Vova led me out and we walked through the prison passageways again.  
“What kind of muck are you using to torture people?  What’s that solution made of?”
“If I tell you, you’ll pass it on to the West.”
“How can I pass it to the West from here?  Maybe I won’t make it out of here at all.”
“Well, maybe you won’t.  Many people don’t, but your type always makes it.  You’ll live and nothing will happen to you.”
“Come on, Vova, tell me.  I’m just interested.”
“It’s a mixture of acetone, kerosene, chlorine and something else.  Our prison invented the fourth component.  Even we don’t know what it is.  They don’t tell us.  There are different concentrations, depending on the punishment.  He just gave you a heavy dose, enough to drive you crazy.  I’m surprised you held out.  After that dose, people usually start talking and sign anything they're told to sign.  They used to rip up people’s bodies with tongs and pincers, but now, in the twentieth century, everything has been changed to chemicals.”
“Did they start using chemicals long ago?”
“Well, no! Maybe about a year ago.  Say, I want to give you some general advice.  Don’t try to prove anything.  It’s better to play dumb.  Do you have a family?”
“A wife and six children.”
“You sure got yourself in a mess! With a family like that, you should be sitting at home quietly.”
We came to the room where the ‘jars’ were located.  Vova handed me over to the guard.  A minute later, I was again plunged into the ‘jar’s dark belly.  I was back to pitch darkness and spiked, steel walls again.  I stood on legs weakened by torture.  The pain swept over me and never left.  I already knew that the pain from the chemicals would last three days.
My thoughts wandered for a long time and I could not focus my attention on anything.  I was still under the influence of the torture.  I began to pray.  My legs began to buckle and I leaned carefully against the wall, first my shoulder, then the other shoulder, and then my back.  Sweat poured down my face, my neck, down my whole body.  I was nauseated from weakness.  I felt the pounding of my heart in my temples and  from time to time, I felt like I was going to faint but strength came from somewhere like a second wind.  I crossed the brink, then stood up and prayed some more.
I had often heard about miraculous deliverance sent from God.  Of course, I wanted deliverance, to be at home with my family, but I knew I had to go through whatever was destined for me.  I had stepped onto the path willingly and I was not in prison by accident.  I had known what I was getting into.  As I prayed, I did not ask for deliverance but only for the strength to endure and to survive.  I prayed that God would protect my family.  Time dragged on endlessly.
Finally, the door of the ‘jar’ opened and they took me back to the cell.  This time, no one was sleeping.  They had all assumed I was in the ‘jar’ again.  They were waiting for me.  Someone had received a parcel from outside that day and they had saved me a piece of sausage, a piece of ‘real’ bread, and an apple.  Boris made tea for me.
 “You look terrible,” he said.  “You look older.  I guess you’re not going to be able to tell us about God today.”
“But I want to.  Your whole life, they taught you there’s no God.  They tried to destroy everything human in you.  That’s why you’re here.  But look, if there’s no God, would I be fighting for nothing?  What are they fighting against?”
As it turned out, I could not to talk about anything that evening.  I lay down on the bunk and fell asleep immediately.  
The next day was Friday and I was not called out for questioning.  “Saturday and Sunday are free,” I thought to myself as I walked beside Boris in the exercise yard.  “That means I can rest for three days.”  We were both silent – I with my thoughts and he with his. Suddenly Boris remarked unexpectedly, “ Do you know somebody by the name of Bykov?”
“Yes, I know him.  I’ve had some run-ins with him before.  Why do you ask?”
“Yesterday, he tried recruiting me to inform on you.  He called me into his office, offered me wine and food from a restaurant.  Shameless bastard! ‘Serve your country,’ he told me, ‘and your country will reach out to you.  You have tuberculosis, only about a year or two to live.’
 I asked him if ‘my country’ meant the cops or the KGB. Then he told me directly, ‘Help us, and we’ll help you.’  He assured me that I had already helped them by exposing you to T.B. He said you wouldn’t last long. Then he promised to help me get medical treatment and early release. ‘What?’ I replied. ‘You want me to be an informer!’
‘Why call it informing?’ he said, ‘That’s only what you criminals call it. We call it being a ‘secret agent’ with a number.  Even the cops will be afraid of you.’
I told him I had never been a stoolie and would not become one now.  ‘As to my health,’ I told him, ‘my country robbed me of that a long time ago. There’s no way to get it back.’”
We returned to the cell and I began remembering the past again.

Chapter 11
The Hunger Strike

In Nahodka, all the people who had received invitations to America were invited to the passport office and told officially that they would be allowed to leave in September. “Register your documents, sell your homes, resign your jobs, and prepare for departure,” they told us.  “The time is short. You must be ready within two to three months.”
The people did what they were told.  Vasily Patrushev and I warned them that this might be a ruse but the people did not listen.  Some people sold their houses, moved in with relatives or friends, and resigned their jobs.  When September arrived, no one was given permission to leave. I understood that the authorities were stalling and that they really had no intention of letting the people leave.  Nonetheless, the people had to be kept quiet with false promises so that the Belgrade conference, which would conclude the Helsinki Accord, could take place tranquilly.
Come what may, I decided to try to force an answer from the authorities before the beginning of the Conference.  I repeatedly urged the people to demand an answer, any answer. I was especially insistent with the people who had sold their houses or given up their jobs with the hope of leaving in September.  The people demanded an answer but the authorities did not respond.  The people realized they had been deceived.
The church council met until daybreak trying to find a solution.  We finally decided that if the authorities were afraid believers would disrupt the Belgrade Conference, that was exactly what we would do.  We would try everything possible to have our concerns discussed at the Conference.
We decided to submit an appeal to the members of the Belgrade Conference asking them to discuss the plight of religious believers in the USSR.  We called attention to the government’s false promises of emigration.  We announced a ten-day hunger strike for the duration of the Conference.  About two hundred people from Nahodka agreed to participate in the hunger strike and more than three hundred people from other parts of the Soviet Union joined us.
In September, we organized a press conference, which was held in the apartment of a ‘Helsinki’ group member, Tatyana Velikanova.  Representatives from Pentecostal churches in Russia, the Pre-Baltics, the Ukraine, and Byelorussia all gathered together for the first time in her apartment.  Our campaign was gaining strength and prestige.
When I returned to Nahodka on October 2nd, I was ordered to appear at the local KGB headquarters. As a warning, KGB Major Rudnitsky read me a law passed by the Presidium of the USSR’s Supreme Soviet.  He told me that if I did not stop what I was doing, I would face criminal charges.  Vladimir Stepanov received the same warning.
On the 10th of October, the ‘Voice of America’ broadcast information about our hunger strike and the reasons behind it.  By then, the ‘Voice of America’ was the most popular radio station in the Soviet Union.  During this time, I was under KGB surveillance.  They followed my wife, and my mother, and me openly.  They put the same surveillance on Stepanov and Patrushev.  We were under strict control.
During the hunger strike, there was a distinct spirit of unity among our church members, which showed itself at one particular prayer service attended by a delegation of Communist party workers, prosecutors, police, and KGB officers.  They showed up asking permission to speak during the service. 
The Commissioner for Religious Affairs, Chuprin, harangued us saying, “Comrades!  You have fallen under the influence of religious fanatics, dissidents, and anti-Soviets, who are inciting you to break Soviet laws.  Stop your hunger strike! No one is investigating you now.  No one is being put in prison.  Just tell me, when was the last time anybody was arrested?”
 	“The last person got out of prison a year ago!” answered someone.
“Well,” responded Chuprin, “No one has been arrested this year!  We are not talking about what happened before.  We won’t be bothering you any more.  You can pray quietly.  Register your church!  If the local authorities offend you, don’t take your complaints abroad.  Just ask me for help.”
“You’re just saying that now because your crimes have been publicized abroad.  That’s the reason you’ve changed your tune.  We don’t believe you.  You will treat us differently when we’ve quieted down, when they have forgotten about us abroad.”
Similar remarks came from all sides of the room.  “We don’t believe you!  We don’t believe you!”
Then the prosecutor rose to address us saying that we were breaking the law and providing fuel for capitalist propaganda.  He threatened to press charges against three of us at least.  Every one understood which three. One by one, the people stood up and said,  “If you arrest them, take me too!” Within a minute, everyone was standing up chanting “There is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends.”  Everyone was prepared to die for his friends.
As we stood before the prosecutor, I was sure that everyone was prepared to go to prison and to suffer on behalf of his neighbor.  Unfortunately, I was wrong.  We did not know then that each one of us would be tested.  Neither did we know how few of us would remain two or three years later.

Chapter 12
Warning from the Supreme Soviet

Our church was not registered.  It existed underground.  We had no church building and held services in members’ homes.  We gathered at the homes of the members who had the most space.  Most recently, we had been meeting at Anna Chuprin’s home.
One day, several weeks after our conversation with the prosecutor, I was walking to work and happened to meet Stepanov.
“Bandits, real bandits!” he said in greeting.
“What’s going on?”
“Didn’t you hear?  The Chuprins’ house was ransacked.”
“What do you mean ‘ransacked’?”  We just had our service there yesterday.”
“Yeah! The service was over at nine o’clock but at midnight, they started ransacking the house.  Come on, take a look.”
We walked to the Chuprins’ house.  All the windows were shattered and the frames broken.  There were holes in the walls from rocks and the plaster was falling down.  The roof had been crushed in many places.
We went into the house. The whole floor was covered with rocks and broken glass.  The rocks were as big as fists or bigger.  We were amazed that the Chuprins were still alive.  As it turned out, they had been able to run to an inside room where the rocks could not reach.  We counted forty-two cobblestones on their four beds.  Sergey Onischenso photographed everything immediately and the Chuprins called the police.  When the police arrived, they simply filled out a report and left.  Later that day, we all helped repair the house.
A few days later, the Chuprins were asked to come to the police station.  “How about that!” said the police supervisor with a smirk.  “Some punk threw a rock through your window but nobody ransacked your house.  You set it all up yourself.  You wanted to send propaganda to the West proving that believers are being persecuted.  How can you prove your house was ransacked?”
“The house has been repaired but we have photographs showing how it looked before.”
“Oh, so you have photographs?  That’s interesting!  Go get them and I’ll take a look.”
When Anna returned with the photographs, there was a KGB officer sitting in the police supervisor’s office.  He looked at the photographs.   
“Who took these photographs and why?  What do you intend to do with them?”
“Why are you asking me about the person who took the photographs?  You should be more interested in who ransacked my house.  You should be looking for the person who did it.”
“You ransacked the house yourself so you could make pictures to send abroad.”
Hearing his insolent reply, Anna started crying and went home.
We decided it was important to get information about what happened to the West but it was no easy to accomplish.  We were six thousand miles from Moscow.  Before we could even buy an airplane ticket, we would have to show our passports.  A train trip would take at least seven days, and we knew the KGB could pull us off the train anytime.
A month later, we made our first attempt to get the pictures to Moscow.  We did not succeed.  Stepanov, Anna, and I drove to the Vladivostock airport, about ninety miles from Nahodka.  We went into the airport building and looked around.  No one was following us.  I went up to the ticket counter where a young woman, obviously a recent graduate, was working as the cashier.
“Are there any tickets to Moscow?” I asked.
“I’ll check and see,” she answered.  “Yes, there are.  There’s a flight leaving in two hours.”
“I need three tickets.”
“Your passports, please.”
I gave her my passport.  She opened it, looked at it, then looked at me. Then she looked at my passport again and then at me.
“Just a minute,” she said and disappeared with the passport.
“We’ve had it,” I thought to myself.
A few minutes later, the young cashier returned.  To my astonishment, she gushed with courtesy and wrote out three tickets.  I thanked her.
We went to the waiting room on the second floor and sat down where we had a view of the whole room.  I had developed the habit of sitting where I could see if I was being followed. 
Twenty or thirty minutes later, my attention was drawn to a strange looking man, about fifty years old.  He was wearing an old, dirty cap and an old, worn-out coat.  He looked like a collective farmer from the provinces, the kind who should be flying some local route.  I suddenly noticed that the ‘collective farmer’ was also wearing stylish, expensive shoes and the trousers of an obviously expensive suit.
“That’s a strange guy,” I told Stepanov. “Look how he’s dressed.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
Several minutes later, the strange ‘collective farmer’ walked by us several times.  From time to time, he stopped to read the plane schedule.  Then he disappeared, only to be replaced by two young men who did not hide they fact they were keeping us under surveillance. We began conferring about what to do: to stop tempting fate and go back home or to press on.  We decided to fly.  We told Anna to go to the restroom, take the documents and photographs out of her purse, and hide them in her clothing.
 When Anna headed for the restroom, the two agents darted after her.  Since their instructions had obviously failed to foresee this contingency, the agents became confused and brazenly raced into the ladies’ room.  They immediately raced out again.
The flight was announced.  No longer noticing any open surveillance, we went through the ticket line and then joined the line waiting to pass through the security check.  Everyone had to pass through a magnetic arch that detected metallic objects.  Anna went first. The red light began flashing immediately and the alarm went off.  Anna was taken into a room to be searched.  Stepanov went next.  The same thing happened.  They took him too.  I looked at the KGB officers and the policemen, who were standing by the metal detectors.  “I’ve had enough game playing,” I announced.  “The alarm will go off for me too.  Take me wherever you’re planning to take me.”
Lt. Colonel Bykov stepped out from behind the arch.  He had heard me.  “Let’s go Boris,” he said.  “Let’s go have a talk.”
He took me to an expensively furnished room.  There were two people sitting there.  The first one was the ‘collective farmer,’ who turned out to be Colonel Yubko, the KGB’s district director.  The second man introduced himself to me saying, “I don’t know why I have to waste my time on you!  I’m a general and have enough work without messing with you. Just what were you intending to do with these photographs in Moscow?  He threw the photographs they had confiscated from Anna down onto the table.
I refused to answer his question. 
“See here Boris.  Your file is growing.  I don’t want to scare you, but I’m telling you the way things are.  The time is approaching when the prosecutor will open this file.  I came here for a reason.  You have already been warned once but I’ve come to give you official warning from a higher level. Go home immediately!  Beginning today, you are under house arrest.  You are forbidden to leave Nahodka for a month.  If you really want to emigrate, you’re going about it the wrong way.”
When he finished speaking, he looked at me silently and waited my response. I stayed silent.
“Well, are you squeamish about asking a KGB agent for advice? I’ll give you some anyway.  Cut your ties with dissidents and foreign diplomats.  Give up politics altogether.”
“I’m not involved in politics.  I never have been.”
“You can’t pretend you’re not being used in a big, political game.  You understand that perfectly.  
“You’re the ones fueling big politics.  Stop persecuting us and don’t prevent us from emigrating just because we disagree with you.”
“You see! What you just said is pure politics. You need to sit quietly for a year, stop giving people advice, and stop complaining.  Just take care of your family.  Then you can submit your documents and we will let you go.  You have to do it quietly without being noticed.
“You’ve made a mistake,” I replied.  “My goal isn’t emigration.”
“Well, our conversation is over.  We understand each other perfectly now.  God grant I never see you again.  You and your wife should think over my advice.”
As soon as I got home, I called Gleb Yukinin and told him about what had happened.

Several days later, Anna received a letter from the American embassy inviting her to a conference.  The letter said she could bring friends along with her if she wished. The Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs had assured the American Embassy that Soviet authorities would not prevent her from entering the Embassy.  We regarded this letter as a guarantee of safe passage.  We bought the tickets in advance, and our same group of people set off for the airport.
We were not detained, and the airplane arrived in Moscow late in the evening.  We drove to Vadim and Zarina Shchelov’s apartment.  They were religious activists in Gleb Yakunin’s group, a unique organization uniting Orthodox, Pentecostal, Baptist, Adventist, and other religious denominations.  Vadim’s and Zarina’s doors were always open to anyone needing help.  In spite of the late hour, we went there.  
	The next morning, Vadim and I sat in the kitchen drinking tea and discussing the reasons behind our trip.  Vadim was sitting near the window.  “There’s something I don’t like about that green, ‘Ziguli’ car,” he remarked.  “I’ve been watching it the whole time I’ve been sitting here.  There are two men sitting in it but they never get out.  I have to go to work, but I think you should keep an eye on it.  I think you picked up a tail.”
We began watching the car.  It stayed in the same place but the people in it began changing.  A ‘Volga’ car drove up, dropped off some people, and picked up the others.  There was no question.  We had a tail.
We called the Embassy and arranged to arrive there at exactly 10:00 A.M.  An Embassy worker promised to come out and meet us.
“Boris,” asked Zarina.  We have some papers we haven’t been able to get to the West.  They can’t fall into the hands of the KGB.  If they do, many people could get hurt.  With the kind of invitation you have, the KGB will never risk detaining you.  They may have a tail on you but they won’t detain you – at least, that’s what they promised the American embassy.”
“Of course, we’ll take the papers,” I answered,  “but if they are that important, we can’t carry them openly.  You never know what will happen.”
I took out the suit I was planning to wear to the Embassy.  I gave Zarina the trousers and showed her the belt.  “Put them in here.”
The information was written on thin, cigarette paper.  Zarina undid the seam on the belt, put the papers inside, and sewed up the seam again.  
As soon as we left the apartment, the Ziguli began following slowly behind us.  There were four people inside.  When we got onto a bus, more KGB agents appeared from out of nowhere.  Although we had an invitation to the embassy, the KGB’s open presence made us nervous.
I could not help noticing a burly, young man with a large face, about twenty-eight years old, standing next to me on the bus.  When we transferred to a subway train, the same man was standing beside me again.  I lost my patience and began talking to him, saying, and “Aren’t you ashamed to be following people around? You should study, get a trade.  You would feel more like a man.  Now all you can do is follow people around.  You’ll spend your whole life doing this.” 
“Just you wait,” he responded.  “You’ll stop your talk.”
We continued arguing until we reached our destination.  We got out at the stop about three hundred feet from the embassy, where there were about ten or twelve people standing around.  Unexpectedly, the people gathered into a group and started moving towards us.  From somewhere, a policeman stepped out into the lead.  I immediately understood that the people were forming a human wall that separated us from the embassy worker, who had already come out to meet us.
“Hey, you guys, wait up!” said the policemen addressing us. “Where are you going?  Show me your passports.”
We held out our passports.  He took them and put them in his pocket.  “Come with me.”
“What’s the problem?” I asked indignantly.
“We’ll figure that out at the police station.”
Just then, two more policemen appeared from a police car that had been parked just around the corner, about twenty meters from the stop.
The police station was nearby, and within five minutes, we were in the guard’s waiting room.  No one paid any attention to us for about four hours.  I was nervous because I had Zarina’s papers on me.  I knew I had to get rid of them so that the KGB would not get ahold of them.  I asked permission to go to the restroom, thinking I could ditch them there like I had done once before.  This time, the officer accompanying did not give me a chance to be alone.
About an hour later, two police officers came into the waiting room.  One of them pointed to Stepanov saying, “ Let’s go get your baggage right now.”
“I don’t remember the way.”
“No problem, we know the way,” answered the second officer.
Not wanting to arouse their suspicion, we tried not to do too much protesting. Stepanov agreed to go with the officers.
“Don’t get my briefcase mixed up with Zarina’s,” I warned Stepanov.  “Her briefcase looks just like mine but there’s money in mine.”
They took Stepanov away but they returned an hour and a half later.  Stepanov handed me Zarina’s briefcase.  I opened it. “You brought me the wrong briefcase!” I exclaimed. “I warned you not to get them mixed up. See, what he brought me!”
One of the KGB agents walked out of the room.  He returned ten minutes later, saying, “Head for the car, all three of you!”  Pointing at me, he said, “You can get your own things, and then it’s off to jail.  You can all sit there for three days until we decide what to do with you.”
We walked up to the door of Vadim and Zarina’s apartment and a KGB agent rang the bell.  Then he stood behind me so that he could not be seen through the peephole.  When Vadim opened the door, I quickly pushed the agent aside and ran into the apartment. “Vadim,” I shouted, “there’s a KGB agent behind me.”
Vadim had figured that out for himself.  Working together, we pushed the door shut and locked it.  The KGB agents started swearing and pushing at the door.
I ran into the study.  Gleb Yakunin was there. Zarina needed no explanation.  She  knew exactly what she needed to do.  She ran up to me and began removing the papers from the belt.  Gleb started dialing Sakharov’s number on the phone so I could tell him what was going on. I did not want to cause Vadim and Zarina any more unpleasantness but the KGB agents were still trying to force open the door.  I talked to Sakharov as fast as I could while Zarina finished taking out her papers and Vadim stood at the door arguing with the agents.  Finally, I grabbed my briefcase and walked out the apartment door.
“We can go now!” I said.  “I have my briefcase.”
“You insolent bastard!” remarked one of the agents.

They brought us to jail.  Anna was hysterical, screaming, “I have an invitation to the embassy!”  The KGB agents ignored her.  One of them pushed her in the back. “Well, now you have an invitation to a cell!” said the agent as he took her away.  Then they took Stepanov and me to different cells.  I announced a hunger strike.
Three days later, we were taken to the airport under guard and sent back to Vladivostok.

1977 was coming to and end and Christmas was approaching.  At one of our church services, I suggested that we send Christmas greetings to the President of the United States and to the American people asking them to pray for everyone denied religious freedom.  I wrote the telegram and brought it to the post office.  I used my own return address.  Two days later, I received a notice to appear at the KGB office.
In Nahodka, the KGB building looks like all the other buildings.  It is an ordinary, three-story structure, which blends in with all the other buildings winding their way downhill to the sea. It is possible to walk by it and have no notion that this building is the KGB building.  There is no sign, only the address, Harbor Street 22. 
I opened the heavy, massive door and found myself standing in a small corridor.  The door shut behind me smoothly.  I tried opening the door in front of me but it was locked. “Maybe it’s time for the lunch break,” I thought to myself.  I wanted to leave but the door behind me was also locked.  It could only be opened from the street.  I was trapped.  “What a system!” I thought.  Just then, a little window opened in the wall on the right side of the room.  I had not noticed it at first.  I heard a voice through the window.  “Who are you and what do you want?”
I tried looking through the window but the glass was made so that no one could see through it.  I put the notice through the window. “Wait here!” said the voice. What else was I supposed to do? I could not step forward or back.
A few minutes later, the door opened and I saw KGB Major Rudinsky.  He was about my height, tall, thin, with wide shoulders.  I had heard about him for a long time.  Ten years earlier, he had pretended to be a ‘bus mechanic’ so that he could work with believers.  No one knew then that he was a senior lieutenant in the KGB.  He gained the trust of believers and began attending services, but then he showed up dressed in the uniform of a KGB lieutenant.  He was in charge of the KGB division responsible for suppressing religion.   Now he was a major.
“Welcome!” said Rudinsky smiling and leading me into a spacious room to the left of the entrance.  It was a classroom, the ‘Lenin Room.’  There were rows of chairs throughout the room and a speaker’s lectern in the front.  I quickly glanced at the chairs and estimated that about fifty people worked here.  Rudinsky immediately noticed what I was doing.
“Well, you’re no fool.  You just stepped into the room and started counting how many people work here.  Right!  I would have done the same.  He put the telegram before me on the table.
“This telegram is no good.”
“Why not?”
“First, it’s anti-Soviet.  Second, it deals with foreign politics.  The Foreign Affairs Department deals with that.”
“Why is it anti-Soviet?”
“Because you asked for prayers for people without any freedom of religion.” 
“I was talking about the world in general.  There’s not religious freedom everywhere in the world, is there?”
	“No, not in the whole world, but we have religious freedom here.”
	“In the telegram, I didn’t say anything about the Soviet Union lacking freedom of religion. I didn’t ask for prayers for the Union.”
	“You insinuated it,” said Rudinsky yawning.
	“You know very well that we have no freedom of religion.  That’s why you won’t let the telegram get through.”
	“We understand ‘freedom’ differently,” said Rusinsky getting angry.  “We think you have more freedom than you need.  This telegram is not going anywhere.  Now it’s part of your criminal file.  Well okay! Now I want to talk to you man to man.  Listen, I grew up in an orphanage, without parents.  My father was shot during Stalinist times but I’m not angry at the Soviet authorities.  I know my father misunderstood the spirit of the times.  Now I’m working for the system that killed my father.  It a new time now and I’m trying to strengthen the system.  I consider it a very just system.”
	I looked at Rudinsky and thought “What a strange man!  They killed his father, robbed him of his childhood, made him an orphan, and he becomes an accomplice to murder.  He’s even proud of it.”
	“You’ve never been abroad,” he continued.  “I have - four times – to Japan, America, Australia, and Canada.  I saw the poor people there, the unemployed, the hungry.  Don’t you have everything you need here?  What else could you need?  You have an apartment, a car, a job – everything.
	I realized he was trying to get me to talk so that he could catch me in my words.  “Man does not live by bread alone,” I answered.  “Please excuse me but I don’t want to talk anymore.”

Chapter 13
A Secret Notebook

1978 arrived with one arrest after another in Moscow.  Almost every month, I had to write letters protesting someone’s arrest.  Remarkably, none of us in Nahodka had been arrested during the past year.  The authorities had left us alone and had focused their blows on the human rights movement.  We knew that when the KGB finished straightening out the dissidents, we would end up isolated from the West and from the international, Christian community.  Then thousands of believers would be transported to the labor camps.  The authorities had made only one mistake. They had inadvertently allowed us to become part of the human rights movement.  We had learned to exist independently.
In spite of the fact that Nahodka was far distant from Moscow, the Nahodka KGB conducted ten to twelve house searches after every arrest in Moscow.  On one February evening about two hours after our house had been searched, my wife and I were putting things back together.  I was picking up books and putting them back on the shelves, while Zina was in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes and cooking supplies that had been thrown around.  Someone knocked at the window.  I opened the door and saw Stepanov standing at the threshold.
“Come on out.  We have to talk.”
Our homes were bugged so we walked out onto the street.  It was an icy evening and snow was falling.  Too cold to stand in the yard and talk, we walked along the street.
“My Luba found a notebook that belongs to some KGB officer,” said Stepanov. “It must have been dropped when they tried to confiscate her hand written poems. Luba wanted to stop them from confiscating her poems.  When no one was looking, she took the notebook of poems and headed for the yard to throw them out.  It was already getting dark.  When Luba got to the yard, there was a KGB agent standing there.  He noticed her notebook, grabbed at her, and tried to get the notebook.  They struggled.  Another KGB agent, Captain Klimov, who was in charge of the raid, heard the noise and came running.  One of them dropped his notebook. 
Having hardly noticed where we were going, we arrived at Stepanov’s house. I spent about an hour looking at the notebook.  It was seventy pages long and its contents were difficult to understand.  Part of it was written in numerical codes, part in shorthand, and a few pages were written with abbreviated words. Even with this brief examination of the notebook, it was clear that the KGB was getting information from informers within our own church. I took the notebook home with me and decided to just wait and see what would happen. 
Several days later, someone knocked at the Stepanov’s door late in the evening.  It was Captain Klimov.  He was dressed in work clothes and Stepanov did not recognize him at first.
“Vladimir, I need to talk to you but, please, not in your house.  It’s bugged.” 
“What’s going on?”
“Please return what you found.”
“What are you talking about?  What am I supposed to return?”
“You mean, you really didn’t find anything?  Maybe your children found something?”
“Is this some kind of set-up? Find what?  What do you mean my house is bugged? Is this some kind of spy game?  Get out of here and don’t come back.  I don’t want to talk to you.  This is a set up.”
“Vladimir, I’m just asking you to return what you found. Please, you are a believer.  I could not have lost it anywhere else, only in your house or in the yard.”
 As we had planned, Stepanov sent him to me. “Boris found something here,” he told Klimov, “Go talk to him.”
The next evening, Klimov was on the same bus I was riding home from work.  With a nod, he indicated that I should get off at the same stop he did.  I got off the bus but Klimov waited a few seconds until the bus door started closing and then almost got stuck.  He nodded at me again, indicating that I should follow him.  We walked about a hundred feet and went around the corner of a building onto a deserted side street.
“Give me what you found.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play games with me.  Stepanov told me what you found.”
“Okay.  We won’t play games, but if you want this conversation to get somewhere, you’d better talk straight.”
“Okay! You have my notebook.  I’ll pay you for it – three hundred rubles.”
“Too little.”
“Five hundred rubles.”
“Too little.”
“How much then?”
“I don’t need money.  Help me.”
“How?”
“I need to know which people in our church are working for you.”
“Are you trying to turn me into a traitor?  I’m a KGB officer.  I took an oath.  If I help you once, you will have a noose around my neck for the rest of my life.  You’ll blackmail me.”
“I only need a little information.  You know that believers keep their word.”
“Sure, I know believers keep their word.”
“I’m just interested in the people you know about.”
“I took an oath.  I can’t do this.”
“You already broke your oath by talking to me. Now, you might as well go confess.”
“I can’t confess.  That would end my career.”
“That’s your problem.  You know, I’m not trying to get you to hand over state secrets.  That’s not what I need.  I only have one request.  Tell me who the informers are in our church.  You don’t even respect them.  They betray their brothers and are prepared to send anybody to prison.  I know you probably offered them money or emigration to the West.  Maybe you have something on them and are blackmailing them.  They work for you out of fear.  State security won’t suffer if you tell me who they are.  You might even save somebody from prison.”
“Well,” said Klimov pensively.  “You’ve got both hands around my neck.  I know your history and we are a lot alike.  We could have studied together in the same class.  We might have been friends.  Instead, we’re hunting each other.”
He grew silent.  I was silent too, allowing him to think it over.
“If you really want to know, it’s been very unpleasant fighting you, fighting believers.  I never imagined myself doing that.  I went into the KGB thinking I would be defending my country, catching foreign agents, and fighting the Mafia.  Look where it all ended up.  Well, okay, I’ll think about it.” 
“How much time do you need?”
“Two days, but I need a guarantee that my notebook won’t get lost.”
“My word is my guarantee.”
We agreed to meet in a forest area in the southern part of the city.
“Get off at the last stop,” I said.  “Walk further down the road past all the houses until the road turns into a forest path.”

Chapter 13
The Undercover Agent

We had agreed to meet at 2:00 P.M. but I arrived an hour and a half early.  I climbed up the hill opposite the road and kept watch for Kimov to arrive.  I wanted to know if a KGB car would bring him or if he would come by bus.  I wanted to make sure there was no ambush.  No matter what, it was dangerous trying to win over a KGB agent.  I was plagued by doubts.  Maybe this was a set up.  Maybe the notebook had been dropped on purpose.  I could end up with criminal charges for inciting a government security worker to commit treason.
Hidden in the branches of small nut trees, I sat on the hill and scanned the area with binoculars.  Seeing nothing unusual, I began watching the road and the bus stop. A bus arrived and several people got off but they did not interest me.  Without forgetting to keep an eye on the road, I scanned the area again.  Twenty minutes later, another bus arrived.  People got off and scattered in different directions.  Only one person continued walking directly up the road.  I looked at him carefully through the binoculars.  It was Klimov.
I had come early for the sake of safety, to check for anything unexpected.  I thought I was prepared for any danger but when I saw Klimov arriving an hour early, I had a bad feeling.  Klimov walked along the dirt road, worn smooth by cars, until he reached the place where the road became a forest path.  He stooped and then suddenly made a quick jump into the bushes.  He began making his way through the bushes parallel to the path.  I realized he did not want to leave any tracks in the snow.  As I continued watching, Klimov climbed about a hundred and fifty feet up the hill towards me.  Then he stopped, hidden among the bushes and trees.  It was hard to see him but, nonetheless, I kept watch through the binoculars.  I saw him lean on a tree and take something out of his jacket.
My nerves were strained to the limit.  I kept guessing about what he had taken from his jacket.  Was it an automatic or a sawed-off shotgun? I suddenly felt surrounded on all sides.  Instinct told me to get out of there before it was too late, but common sense told me to stay calm.
Klimov stood still for about five minutes.  Then, without climbing any higher, he moved across the hill.  Now he was holding something in his hand.  I was sure he was armed.  He stopped again, suddenly hid himself in the thick nut trees, and I lost sight of him.  I felt surrounded by the same trees, which were also hiding my enemy.  At that moment, the trees seemed hostile.  An icy wind shrieked in their branches and prevented me from hearing Klimov’s footsteps.   
I got myself under control and began scanning the area again very carefully.  A few minutes later, I spotted Klimov again.  He was climbing up the hill and coming toward me.  There was no way he could see my tracks because I had crossed over the crest of the hill from a northerly direction.  Now he was walking almost straight at me.  About a hundred and fifty feet in front of me, he came to a stop at a linden tree.  He stood there a long time and then slowly walked back down the hill.  I lost sight of him but spotted him again when he reached the road.  
I looked at my watch.  It was exactly two o’ clock.  I had to decide what to do - climb down to the path or go back over the crest of the hill.  I decided to go down the hill but not all the way to the path.   I could decide later whether or not to meet with Klimov. 
I began climbing down the hill slowly, hiding in the bushes and trees, but my legs refused to obey me.  They felt terribly weak.  I continued on by sheer will.  I stopped about sixty feet from the road and started watching Klimov.  He was looking at his watch.  It was 2:20.
I decided to meet him.  I stepped out of the trees and whistled.  Klimov turned around and saw me.  I waved my hand and indicated that he should follow me.  We climbed a little way up the slope and stopped. Klimov saw the binoculars in my hands and laughed.
“Sorry,” I said, “but I want to search you.  You might have something on you, a gun maybe.”
“Okay, search.”
Klimov opened his jacket.  There were binoculars hanging around his neck.  We both laughed.
“Did you bring my notebook?”
“Did you really think I’d give it back without double checking it first?  You could tell me anything.  Your notebook is in a safe place.  No one can get it but me.” 
‘Okay,” he responded.  “Tell me exactly what you want to know.”
“I need information about us.  What do the authorities intend to do with us?  Who is in danger of arrest? Who in our church is working for you?”
“My, you have a lot of questions!  You said you only had one question.  You know, Boris, I look at you and can’t figure out if you’re a fanatic or an adventurer.  Don’t be offended when I say this.  I mean it positively.  No matter what, there is something abnormal about you.  We KGB have beliefs too but we work for more than just beliefs.  We get very good pay, great privileges.  We work for rewards, titles, and positions - that’s the bottom line.  What about you?  I know you’re no fool, but I also know what you’re up against.  You are getting in the way of a big machine, a terrible machine that’s already chewed up many people, all their remains, and all memory of them.  In the end, it will get you too! Do you even realize what you’re getting me into?”
“Look, Klimov,” I responded,  “You acknowledge you’re one of the teeth in the machine.  You even admit you’re well greased. Sure, I know I can fall into its teeth but I’m trying to save as many people as possible from being swallowed.  You’re doing just the opposite. As to rewards for my work, I don’t expect any.”
Klimov became lost in thought.  He looked at his feet a long time but glanced at me from time to time.  Suddenly, he said decisively: “Don’t think you’ve won me over to your side.  I don’t even want to think about that!  I’m a human being too, so I’m going to tell you something that’s not part of the exchange for the notebook.  I don’t know all the undercover agents in your church, only the ones I work with.  I will give you the secret address where they meet.  There are not as many as you think.  You’ll see.  Each undercover agent has his own informers or people he influences.  Those people don’t even suspect they are helping us or doing what we want.  We get information from them as needed or use them to spread rumors among you.  Every undercover agent works particular days and hours according to a schedule, but none of them ever meets the others.  They don’t even know they have the same supervisor.
“You might invite honest people to that secret address and I would jump to the conclusion that they’re undercover agents.  Let’s do it another way.  When do you usually make contact with your agent, the one who gives you information for your notebook?”
“On Thursdays.  This time I need information about the person who photographed the Chuprins’ house after it was ransacked.  It would be bad for us if those photographs made it to the West.  I need to assign the agent to find out about that.”
“That’s two days from today.  Send the agent to Patrushev.  Make him arrive at Patrushev’s house on Friday evening.  If he shows up asking about the photographs, I will return your notebook immediately.”
“Okay,” agreed Klimov. “I don’t know about any arrests planned for your church members,” he continued,  “because everything depends on Moscow.  Moscow decides the arrests.  Moscow considers you people beyond our capacity.  If you weren’t known abroad, we could have arrested anyone of you at our discretion.  As to emigration, every visa office in the whole Soviet Union – every Republic, every region, every city, and district – has a list of people who applied for emigration on religious grounds.  No one on the list will be allowed to emigrate for any reason – not for family reunification, not because of an invitation from Israel, and not for any other reason. For the time being, only the people we need there will be allowed to go.  If the Soviet Union ever let you go, it would be an admission that there’s no freedom of religion here.”
Klimov grew silent.  He breathed in the frosty air deeply, looked up at the surrounding hills, and then from side to side.  He wanted to say something else but had not fully made up his mind.  I did not pressure him.  Suddenly, Klimov looked me in the eye.  “Don’t contact me anymore and don’t phone me for any reason.  In the future, if I have important information, something I consider necessary to give you, I will find a way.  I have to write a report about every contact that I have with you.  I have to explain the reason I met with you and what we talked about.  Does anyone know about our meetings?”
“No one knows.”
“Does Zina know?”
“No, Zina doesn’t know.”
“Remember, if this gets out, it could destroy us both.”

 

Chapter 14
Klimov Helps Us

By the following week, we knew who a few of the undercover agents were.  I kept my word and returned Klimov’s notebook.  I did not ask him about anything else.  Later, he helped me several times and gave me information about KGB plans.
In June of 1978, I was getting ready to meet with the Adventists.  They had a printing press but we only had typewriters.  By this time, there were more than ten thousand Christians throughout the whole Soviet Union and it was essential to have our own printing press.
I was supposed to meet with the Adventist leaders in Moscow and discuss the printing press question with them.  This time, Timothy Prokopchick was supposed to accompany me.  In spite of his youth, he was trustworthy.  He had already served a term in Soviet labor camps and was now serving as a church council member.
Sensing that I would not remain free for long, I had begun looking for replacements.  I had enlisted Prokopchick, Sergey Anischeko, and Vitaliy Istomin.  They were all younger than I was and they were all trustworthy.  We had put together a plan.  First, a car would bring us to Partizansk, a town about thirty-eight miles from Nahodka.  A person would meet us there with tickets for the train to Khabarovsk.  We were supposed to get there just as the train was leaving, get the tickets from the person, and ride to Khabarovsk.  In Khabarovsk, we planned to buy airplane tickets to Moscow.  We had chosen Khabarovsk because it was in a different regional district than Nahodka and not under the jurisdiction of the Primorsk regional administration.
Several days before our intended departure, Rudinsky and his agents came to where I was working.  They took me straight from work and brought me to the KGB building to be questioned about the Scharansky case. They brought me into an office. Klimov and another person in uniform, whom I had never met, were sitting there.
The man in uniform introduced himself, saying, ‘I’m Lieutenant Colonel Kuzmin, Senior Investigator, Special Investigations.”  Two years later, this man was to become my primary investigator.  Now he was only interested in getting information about Sharansky.
“Sure, I know Sharansky,” I said.  “He’s an honest, courageous person.  The KGB has victimized him.  That’s all I can say about him.” 
“Am I supposed to write that down?” asked Kuzmin.
“Sure. Write it down.”
We exchanged similar remarks for over an hour.  Even Kuzmin understood the nonsensical nature of our conversation and explained, “We received a request by telegraph to question you about this matter.  I will let Moscow know how you behaved.”  Then, turning to Klimov, he said, “Take him outside.”
We walked out to the corridor.  “Order a car to pick him up,” Klimov told the guard on duty at the window.
Klimov walked outside with me.  When the massive door had shut smoothly behind us, Klimov looked around, from side to side.  Although the KGB garage was only fifty meters down the street, the car had not yet arrived.  Klimov talked softly.  “We know you’re planning to meet the Adventists.  We don’t know when you’re leaving or why, but every airport from the Primorsk to the Khabarovsk region has your name and photograph.  Everything is blocked.  We didn’t get this information here in Nahodka.  It came from our undercover agents among the Adventists.  If you take an airplane, don’t leave from anyplace closer than Khabarovsk.  I’m warning you again.  Watch out for Rudinsky!  He’s an animal.  He’s prepared to do anything, including murder.  Never travel alone.  I’m telling you this for a reason.”
Just then, the car arrived.  “Take him back to work,” ordered Klimov.
After the conversation with Klimov, I changed my route completely without telling anyone.  If I failed, I would have no one to suspect.

We made it to the appointed place successfully but the meeting with the Adventists did not take place.  They did not show up.  A few days later, I found out that their downfall had begun.  Several of their printing presses had been discovered and the arrests had begun.  A few months later, their leader, Vladimir Shelkov, was arrested.  He died in prison a year later.
The underground Adventist Church almost completely ceased to exist.  Klimov had been right.  There had been many secret agents among the Adventists.    

Chapter 15
The Wild Boar Hunt

Summer flew by unnoticed and fall had already begun.  It was November.  My nerves were strained to the limit.  I need rest.  I loved hunting, and for me it provided the best rest.  Back in 1973 and 1974, I had often gone hunting for fur bearing animals like sable and mink but I also liked hunting wild boar.
I looked up my old hunting companions, Boris Mysanikov and Vasily Kryukov.  Since I had gone hunting with them before, I knew they could not live without hunting.  I also knew that they always had their hunting licenses up to date.  By law, they could include me in their hunting licenses.  Although I had not gone hunting in the past few years, I had paid my membership dues regularly and my hunting ticket was still valid.
 Boris and Vasily agreed to the trip and we set off for the ‘taiga,’ the vast evergreen forest in northern Russia, which extends from the Ural mountains to the Pacific coast. Many of my friends noticed my sudden disappearance but they assumed that I had gone somewhere to work on the emigration matter.
The weather stayed warm.  In Nahodka, it is always like that.  Right on the coast, the weather is always warm but when you travel twenty-five miles inland into the heart of the ‘taiga’, you gradually fall into Siberia.  We drove the ‘taiga’ road.  We had two dogs with us in the car.  The ground was covered with snow and the further we drove, the more snow there was.  
The road wound through a valley between two mountains.  From time to time, the valley widened and then narrowed once more giving the impression that the mountains formed a gate that admitted only the little river and the road.  Then, as the valley widened again, the road and the little river diverged and went their own ways.
We drove along the icy, bumpy road and slowly entered the realm of the ‘taiga’.  We continued for about twelve miles and then turned onto an old logging road.  It was worse that the first road and even more bumpy.  The car jolted from side to side, especially when the wheels hit iced over puddles of water covered with snow.  Sometimes, the car skidded and two of us had to get out and push.
  As we climbed up out of the valley into the foothills, we drove even more slowly. Then, without expecting it, we caught sight of a winter hut covered in snow.  Its  solitary window looked out onto the road.  We stopped and got out of the car.
The ‘taiga’ surrounded us.  I stood admiring.  The trees were covered with snow and the sun’s rays pierced through their branches and clung to the hills.  To my left, a huge mountain, covered with forest, rose above the foothills. On my right was a slightly raised area with a large plateau, cut through in places by ravines.  Sometime in the past, the plateau had been logged but now it was covered with nut trees and oak.  Here and there, green patches of cedar were still standing.  Since it was against the law to cut down cedar, the loggers had left the trees undisturbed.  This place was the wild boars’ favorite place to root for acorns and nuts out under the snow.
If you want to hunt wild boar, go to the plateau with its oak and nut trees.  If you want to hunt sable, go the other way, to the foot of the mountain. If you want to hunt mink, walk along the little river and set traps.  The ‘taiga’ is an amazing place for hunting.
I suddenly noticed the sound of sawing.  Boris and Valiliy were sawing wood and smiling at me.
“Well, how do you like the place?” asked Vasily.
“Fit for a king!”
“We’re the kings here.  We are the masters.”
I looked at the two ‘kings’ pulling the two-man saw back and forth between them.  Boris was short and stocky, with wide shoulders and a broad, Mongolian face. Vasily was tall, with gray eyes and light hair.  Both of them had descended from generations of Siberian hunters.
I put my rucksack and guns in the winter hut and then went back outside to take over for Boris, who went inside to start a fire and prepare dinner.  As Vasily and I sawed wood, the dogs ran around poking their noses in the snow, sniffing around, and chasing each other.  They knew why we had brought them here.  They were real hunting dogs.
Soon we were sitting in the winter hut.  It was already warm and pleasant.  Our blankets covered the plank-wood sleeping benches. A pot of soup made from dried ingredients sat on the table and a teapot puffed away on the iron stove.
“Hey you bums, get up to the table,” said Boris with a smile.
“How come we’re bums?” asked Vasily.” See how much wood we cut!”
“As long as we haven’t gotten a boar, we’re all bums.”
The next morning, we were in no hurry to get started.  Boar hunting only begins after lunch.  Wild boar sleep hidden deep in the forest until then.  After lunch, they go out to feed.
At about ten o’clock, we went out onto the plateau to look for fresh boar tracks.  Vasily and walked ahead of us with his dog on a leash. His dog was huge. It had a short, gray coat and was named ‘Gray,’ of course.  Boris’ dog ‘Gypsy’ was big, black, and shaggy, but not as big as Gray. 
We climbed the plateau without hurrying.  I went last and watched the dogs with interest. “We usually lose about five or six dogs a year from boar tusks or bear claws,” said Vasily as we walked,  “but we’ve had these dogs for four years.”
When we discovered boar tracks, Vasily grew silent.  They turned out to be old tracks and the dogs did not even react to them.  We moved on.  Gradually we began seeing more tracks.  Then we came upon a place that had been completely trampled down.
“A herd went through here not long ago,” remarked Vasily.
We crossed another gully on the plateau and the dogs began pulling at their leashes. Vasily and Boris set them loose at almost the same time.  The dogs ran ahead silently and then disappeared over a small hill and into another gully.  A few minutes later, we heard them barking.  We all stopped in our tracks, listened, and then ran in the direction of the barking.  Without noticing what each other was doing, we all tore our shotguns from our shoulders and kept on running.  No one was expecting to meet a huge, ferocious, Siberian boar with tusks measuring twelve inches or more, tusks that could cut a dog in half with just one blow.
The dogs stopped barking and we heard a trampling sound.  A wild boar was rustling in the bushes. Then he rushed past us in huge bounds.  Vasily did not have time to aim well but he fired a shot as the boar disappeared into the ravine.  Not knowing if the boar was wounded or not, we all rushed to the ravine where it had disappeared. As we ran, I could hear the dogs barking to my right.  I followed the barking. After I had covered about six hundred feet, I found myself in the cedars, where there was no undergrowth.  About two hundred feet ahead, I saw the boar thrashing about, encircled and kept at bay by the dogs.  They were very skillful.  Whenever the boar rushed at one of them, the other dog snapped at it from behind.  When the boar turned around to protect its flank, the dog jumped back to avoid its terrible tusks, while the second dog simultaneously snapped at the boar’s back legs, trying to sever the tendons. The dogs and the wild boar writhed before me in a dance of death.  Either the dogs would fail to avoid the tusks or they would sever the boar’s tendons.  Either way would end it.
I raised my shotgun, fired a shot, and the boar slumped down on its back legs.  I had hit it.  As if by command, both dogs lunged at the boar simultaneously, but at just that moment, the boar turned its head to gouge Gypsy.  Gypsy flew off to the side.
“Gypsy is all through hunting!” I thought to myself.
The boar saw me standing in front of it and lurched forward towards me with a lopsided gait. Just then, Grey sunk his teeth into the boar’s back but the boar paid no attention. I pulled the trigger on the second barrel but, instead of a shot, I heard a pitiful click.  Misfire! I grabbed the spare cartridge I kept in my shirt pocket within easy reach for emergencies and quickly reloaded the shotgun. When the boar was only ten to fifteen meters from me, I managed to cock the gun.  While simultaneously jumping aside, I fired almost point-blank into the boar’s flank.  The shotgun blast was so powerful it threw the boar to the side.
At that moment, I noticed Vasily running towards me shouting “Never approach a boar from the front!” We stood looking at the dead boar. “Where’s Gypsy?” asked Vasily.
“Down there in the gully.  It looked like a tusk got him.”
We looked down in the gully and saw Boris leading Gypsy, who could barely stand on his legs. When we were all together, Boris checked the dog over and concluded, “He managed to avoid the tusk, but he must have crashed into a tree when he jumped aside.  It’s happened before.  This isn’t the first time.  He’ll gorge himself on meat, rest a couple of days, and then be back to normal,”
We measured the boar tusks.  They were three and a half match boxes long, about seven inches. Boris began dressing the meat.  He was a master at this.  He threw the dogs their portion of meat and internal organs.
We continued hunting for another two weeks and shot eleven more boars.  Then Vasily drove back to Nahodka to get a truck so we could load the meat and sell it.  Boris and I stayed behind in the winter hut.             

When Vasily returned to the winter hut, he was a different man.  He smelled strongly of vodka.  We loaded the meat in the truck and Vasily asked me to go with him to unload it and weigh it.  We wanted to be sure of getting the right price when we sold it. 
That evening, we set off for home. Vasily and I rode in the car. I did the driving. Boris followed behind us in the truck. As we moved slowly along the icy road, a deer jumped out onto the road ahead of us and then darted away. “I always feel bad if I hit a deer,” remarked Vasily.  Then he grew silent, looked at me, and took a half-empty bottle of vodka from under his shirt.  He pulled out the cork with his teeth, gulped down a few swallows from the bottle, took a deep breath and said, “Promise me you won’t blab this to anyone!”
“What’s going on?  What happened?” I asked.
“No, give me your word first.”
“Okay, I promise I won’t say anything.”
“Do you know Rudinsky?”
“Why are you asking about him?”
“First tell me if you know him or not.”
“Yes, I know him.”
“Well, I’ve known him for about ten years.  We used to work together at a bus depot.  He loves hunting too.  We used to go hunting together.  Five years ago, he went to work for the KGB.  I haven’t seen him since then, but when I went home to get the truck, my wife told me I was supposed to call my old friend who used to work with me at the bus depot.  She gave me his telephone number.  I did not recognize it but I called anyway. Somebody came on the line saying, ‘This is the officer on duty.  Who do you want to talk to?’
‘I don’t know,’ I answered.  ‘I was given this number to call.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Vasily Kryukov,’ I answered.
‘Oh, just a minute.  I know what this is about.  Don’t hang up,’ said the officer.
A few seconds later, I heard a click and a happy voice shouting through the line, ‘Vasily, old friend, this is Tolik Rudinsky.  Are you calling from home?’
‘Yes, from home.’
‘Do you have some time to meet me?’
‘Yes, I have the time.’
‘You don’t have to drive. I’ll send a car for you.  I really need to talk to you.’
Forty minutes later, a car picked me up.  Half an hour later, I was at the KGB office.  Rudinsky led me into his office - at least I think it was his office.  He took a bottle of Armenian cognac from the shelf – five star cognac!  I hadn’t seen anything like that for a long time.  He took out some liqueur glasses and set a bar of chocolate on the table.  Then he put down a jar of black caviar and a few pieces of bread.
‘Vasily, come sit down, don’t be shy,’ said Rudinsky.  ‘Have some chocolate.  Have some bread and caviar.  Go ahead.’  
He poured the cognac. I noticed that there were three glasses.  Just as we clinked our glasses together in a toast, another man appeared at the door.
‘Oh, you’ve started without me,’ he said.
‘This is my supervisor,’ explained Rudinsky.
The supervisor did not shake my hand or offer his name but only gave me a wink when he had emptied his glass.  We talked, recalling how we had worked together at the bus depot and how we had gone hunting together.  Suddenly, Rudinsky asked, ‘Do you know Perchatkin?’
‘Well, sure I know him.  We just spent two weeks together hunting wild boar.’
‘Hunting you say? Do you have any idea who you’ve been hunting with?’
‘What’s this all about? Why are we talking about him?’
‘You’ve been hunting with a CIA agent!’
Right then, his supervisor threw ten photographs onto the table in front of me.  I picked one up.  Boris, you were in the photograph.  I could see you talking with someone.  There was a man standing next to you.  He was about forty years old, short, with a round face and a mustache.
‘Do you know who he’s with here?’ asked the supervisor.  ‘He’s with a CIA agent posing as a diplomat.’
They told me his name but I forgot it, something beginning with ‘P.’”
“Pringle?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Well tell me more, Vasily,” I said.
“Well, I took the second photograph.  You were standing with a tall man, about half a head taller than you.  I couldn’t see his face very well but I could see you.
‘And here we have Perchatkin meeting with Hudson, a CIA agent,’ the supervisor told me. ‘He’s working in Moscow now and hasn’t been expelled yet.’
I remember that guy really well.  His name is Hudson, but the most important  picture was the one of you with Sharansky, the spy. You were sitting on a bench with him.
‘See who you’re gotten mixed up with!’ the supervisor told me. ‘See the kind of friends you have!’
Rudinsky was not in the office the whole time I was talking with the supervisor.  He had walked out and left the two of us alone.
‘Well that’s the situation,’ continued the supervisor as he poured us another glass of cognac.  Then he stood up and walked to the window.  His back was turned to me.  ‘Tell me Vasily,’ he said.  ‘Do hunting accidents happen often?’
‘Of course they happen.’
‘What kind of accidents?’
‘Well, a man might be mauled by a bear or attacked by a wild boar.  Sometimes, inexperienced hunters shoot each other accidentally.’
The supervisor was silent.  He did not turn around to face me but kept standing with his back to me.  Then, in a different tone of voice, he said, ‘Vasily, could you kill  someone?’
‘What do you mean, kill someone?  Why should I kill someone?’
He asked me again, ‘Could you kill someone?’
‘Well, it all depends.  Maybe, if there were a reason, I could.’
‘That means you could.’
‘Why are you bothering me with these questions?  What does it matter to you?’
‘Well, Vasily.  I hope you understood who to kill and the reason for doing it.  I hope this conversation stays between the two of us.’
Just then, Rudinsky came back into the room, saying, ‘Vasily, it’s time for us to go home.  A car is already waiting for you at the entrance.  If you need help, just ask.  Don’t be shy.  You know, the only people who are afraid of us are the ones who know why they should fear us.’ ”

Vasily ended his story, reached for the bottle of vodka again, and added, “I’ve been drinking ever since I had that cognac.  I feel like shit.  Of course, I don’t believe you’re a CIA agent.  How could they call you that?  I’ve known you a long time.  Now I feel sorry for you.  Why don’t you move away somewhere!  If they have your name, they’ll take you out with a bang.  They have probably made the same suggestion to someone else besides me.”
Vasily was silent for a long time, then burst out saying, “Who do they think they’re propositioning, those SOBs!  That Rudinsky is a KGB whore.  What does he take me for?  I’m not like him.  If I had known this before, I would have gotten rid of him while we were hunting.  I’m an ‘Old Believer’* and the KGB killed many of my relatives.
Valily went back to the ‘taiga’ alone.  I could not hunt any more.  I was the one being hunted.

Chapter 16
KGB Informers

From my point of view, 1979 was my most productive year since I had become active in the campaign for religious rights.  I wrote several articles analyzing the law on religious cults and participated in compiling and distributing an appeal titled “Thirty Years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”  I also wrote “An Appeal for Help,” which was addressed to the government and to the people of the USA, Canada, Australia, England, West Germany, France, and Italy.  I also made several appeals to foreign journalists.  My subject matter was always the same – the plight of religious believers in the Soviet Union.  I did not know then that I would have to answer for every document and for every word during my interrogation.
At about that time, the Nahodka KGB began applying the tactics they had developed during their repression of the Adventists.  They attempted a massive recruitment of believers. According to Klimov, the KGB’s Fifth Department increased its staff to accomplish this task.  “The KGB is recruiting believers,” said Klimov, “not so much as actual informers but as a means of sowing mistrust among you believers.  We want you to get the impression that any one of you could be an informer.  We can hide our real agents behind this screen of doubt.” Klimov told me the truth this time too. The KGB recruited one believer after another.  
	We had a good rule in our church.  If the KGB contacted any one of us, that person was obliged to declare it openly in church, reveal what the KGB had said, and to explain how he had responded.  This was the only way we were able to expose what the KGB was doing.  It was the only way to defy the KGB’s demand for silence about the encounter.  If a person kept his first meeting with a KGB agent a secret, then the KGB invariably approached him again.  They usually did not suggest 'collaboration' during the first or second meeting but waited to see how the person behaved.  When someone hid his encounter, the KGB knew they had a coward, someone who feared them.  Then they scared him even more and openly forced him to work for them. 
	The KGB’s Fifth Department was trying to get things arranged so that we would all end up informing on each other. As a rule, they promised emigration as a reward for working with them. They understood perfectly that no one would work with them willingly. Unfortunately, the contact with the KGB eventually ‘soiled’ each one of us.
	Klimov explained the tactics to me.  “Your man will work for us only if he feels an obligation to do so or if he becomes dependent on us.  We do our best to create that kind of situation.  When we began implementing our new tactics, the KGB director ordered the public prosecutor and the police to keep close watch on believers and on their family members, especially the ones who had applied for emigration.  The prosecutor and police were ordered to inform the KGB immediately whenever they observed a believer committing a minor offense, a misdemeanor, or even something that could be fabricated into a crime.  They were forbidden to make any arrests without getting the KGB’s go-ahead.  When we find believers like that, we really work them over. Most of the time, they become our agents.  First, we call them to the KGB, not to the secret apartment but to the KGB building because it scares them more.  Then we intimidate and blackmail them.  We let them know what will happen to them if they are tried on criminal charges.  We let them know how embarrassing it might be if we were to disclose their transgression to their fellow believers.  If someone hesitates or pretends he did nothing wrong, we show him photographs of his compromising situation.  There is no end of things we can collect against such a person.  Well, when we finish intimidating him, we offer help warding off the police and avoiding dishonor.  We offer our help in exchange for his help.  We usually start off with simple questions like ‘Where was the service held last week?’ Some people hesitate at first and don’t want to answer so we help them along saying ‘Why are you hesitating? The service was at Burlachenko’s home, wasn’t it?’  They end up confirming it.  In no time at all, they are the ones offering information about where and when the services took place.  Then they're telling us who did the preaching, who preached what, and offering information about what happened at the brothers’ meeting.  Then we have to decide how to use our ‘agents.’  They usually become what we call ‘agents of influence.’ We use them to cause dissension at church services, to help isolate the people who disagree, and to spread rumors we need to spread.  We want these people to develop the feeling that they can do anything without fear of punishment.  We want them to feel that we are protecting them and that they can’t survive without us.  These people really get inspired and become our most valuable agents.  They work without being forced.

In 1979, the KGB also tried to entice me into working for them.  Once, when I was standing at a bus stop, a black, ‘Volga’ car came to a stop beside me.  Rudinsky was sitting in the front seat with the driver and Klimov was sitting in the back.  They both got out of the car. 
“Hello, Boris,” said Rudinsky.  “You have to come with us.  We have business to discuss with you.”
‘I have my own business to do.”
“Forget your business.  Ours is more important.”
“I’m the one who decides what’s important.”
“That’s enough mouthing off.  I have to take you somewhere.  A very important person wants to talk to you.”
“I don’t have time.  I don’t want to talk to your important person.”
“So, you want to fight us?” said Rudinsky getting angry.  “We can ‘help’ you into the car if we have to!  I have orders to follow.”
Klimov was silent the whole time.  He seemed uncomfortable.  
I had no choice but to get in the car.  They brought me to the ‘Nahokda’ hotel.  As we entered the elevator, Rudinsky told me “The important person is waiting for you in room 88.”
Rudinsky opened the door of room 88 and had me enter first. I stepped into the room and the door slammed behind me.  I turned around.  Rudinsky was not there.  Klimov had not come up to the room either.  He had stayed on the first floor.
In the room, a man was sitting at a table.  He asked me to sit down in an armchair.  When I was seated, he got up from the table and began pacing the room.  “We won’t talk long,” he said.  “I will tell you this directly.  You have two roads ahead of you.  There is no third road.”
“Excuse me,” I interrupted.  “Who are you?  I don’t talk to people I don’t know.”
“Colonel Valkov,” he said and then went on with what he was saying.  “The first route is to work for us.  Hold on! Hear me out! We’re not asking you to become an informer.  We don’t need your secrets.  We already know them.  We’ve had our eye on you for a long time.  You’re young, smart enough, and a good prospect.  You have authority.  We can give you whatever you want.  Of course, we’re not offering you the moon but you can have it all as long as you say what we want you to say and go where we want you to go.  You can travel abroad.  If necessary, we will make you a bishop.  We can do that.”
“You already have enough people who say what you want and go where you want them to go. I’m not like them.  Have I ever given you the slightest indication of being open to such an offer?  I’m offended by your suggestion.” 
“In that case, you have chosen your own path – the gate to prison.”
That same week, the KGB made the same kind of offer to my wife, saying, “Zina, you should help your husband.  He has two paths open to him – either to stop what he is doing or go to prison.  If you don’t want to see your husband end up in prison, then keep us informed about his plans.  That way, we can disrupt all his plans and help keep him out of jail.  Think about it. Don’t rush into saying ‘no’.” 
“No!” answered Zina.

The KGB did not let up.  They even began recruiting the children to inform on their parents.  We discovered what was going on only when several children began refusing to go to school.  When their parents tried to find out why they were refusing to go to school, they discovered only that the children were afraid of school and afraid to explain why.  The children were terrified, but no one knew why.
We found out later that the children were being called out of their classes and sent to the principal’s office.  There was a man there, whom they had never seen before.  At the first visit, the man asked them very simple questions like “How are you?” or “Where does your dad work?”  On the next visit, he asked, “Do you like going to church services with mom and dad or maybe you don’t want to be a believer?” Then he asked, “Who comes to visit your mom and dad?  What do they do?  Do they come to drink tea or do they talk about something?  Can you hear what they’re saying?”
If a child responded, “I don’t know,” the man told them, “Listen to what your parents are talking about!”  He repeatedly pressured the children to describe their parents’ visitors and what they discussed. Before the man let the children go back to class, he warned them to keep quiet about talking to him.  He frightened them by threatening that something bad would happen if they said anything.
The KGB corrupted the children and taught them to inform on their parents.  The parents were outraged.  We decided to have the children write about what was happening to them in school. Within a few days, we had collected over a hundred letters.  The parents attached their children’s photographs to their letters and brought them to church services.  We decided to make the letters public. 
I knew that information about our plans to get the children’s letters to Moscow could leak out to the KGB so we tried to plan everything very carefully.  Those of us who could usually get information to Moscow were stymied so we finally decided to try sending Vasily Patrushin’s brother Inokenty as a decoy. We decided to have him travel openly to draw the KGB’s attention, but not with the letters and photographs.
The KGB took the bait.  They detained Indokenty at the Vladivostok airport as he was trying to board the airplane. Colonel Bykov directed a lengthy search but the KGB agents were amazed to find nothing on him.  They suspected that their undercover agents had given them false information. Then Bykov suddenly got an idea.  His attention focused on a sack of candy in paper wrappers. He unwrapped each piece of candy, held each wrapper against the light, and then put them in a neat pile.  Then he put all the candy wrappers in his briefcase saying, “Our experts will examine them.”
While the KGB was busy with Inokenty, I made it to Khabarovsk, where I boarded a plane to Moscow using someone else’s identification documents and a ticket made out to him.  I did not carry the letters and photographs either because it would have endangered the man who loaned me the documents.  I had other reasons for getting to Moscow.
 At the same time that all of this was happening, my wife and eight year old son Oleg were boarding the “Vladivostok-Moscow’ express train.  She was the one carrying the children’s letters.

Chapter 17
Escape

I arrived in Moscow safely and immediately mailed the passport back to its owner.  From then on, I traveled on my own documents.  I went to see my friend and fellow dissident Viktor Elistratov.  Victor spoke English fluently and with his help, I was able to speak with diplomats and correspondents.  I told Victor the reason for my visit.
The next day, I went to see Boris Chernobylsky, an activist in the Jewish emigration movement.  A few years later, Boris ended up in the Kalyma labor camp on a regular regime, where I was serving my second term on a strict regime.
Chernobylsky gave me good advice and agreed to help.  “I think you should present your movement independently in Western political and social circles,” he said. “You need to be able to act without mediators, who do not understand the finer points of your problems.  I will help you get in touch with Western political representatives.  When I get the right opportunity, I will send you a telegram wishing you a happy birthday.  I will send it to any address you want.  When you receive the telegram, it means you must be in Moscow a week later.”
When I left his apartment several hours later, there were two KGB agents standing at the entrance.  They did not attempt to hide.  I walked on, paying no attention to them but they followed about fifteen paces behind me.  “Are they going to arrest me or just play on my nerves?” I wondered.  I came to an intersection.
At just that moment, a car pulled up and stopped in front of me.  Two men jumped out and the two agents, who had been following me, came up from behind and grabbed me under the arms.  A few seconds later, I was in the car. “These are real experts,” I thought to myself. “The other pedestrians did not notice a thing.”

The KGB brought me to some kind of police department and left me there under police guard.  Two hours later, KGB officer Boldin showed up.  He read me an order of expulsion from Moscow, signed by the city commandant.  “Do you have any money?” Boldin asked.
“What does my expulsion order have to do with money?”
“We need to buy you a ticket for your return trip.”
“When I need a return ticket, I can get it without your help.”
“I’m asking you again.  Do you have money or not?” said Boldin trying to remain calm.
“Instead of asking me about money, why don’t you tell me why you grabbed me on the street like some kind of gangster.  You didn’t have a warrant.”
“This is the last time I’m going to ask you.  Do you have money or not?”
As a deliberate protest, I took the newspaper from the table and began reading it. I ignored Boldin.
“Well, that’s it!” said Boldin calling two policemen.
They brought me to the Domodedovo airport, took me into a room on the second floor, handed me over to two men in uniform, and ordered them to guard me.  When the flight to Magadan was announced, Boldin came back in the room saying, “It’s time for us to go!” He ordered me to accompany him.
Ten minutes later, we were climbing the airplane ladder.  The plane was an IL-18.  That type of plane never flew to Vladivostok, only IL-62s.  “Are we really going to  Magadan?” I wondered.  “Is this a joke?  Maybe they’re playing on my nerves again.”  I did not start asking questions.
Boldin and the two guards led me into the third and last compartment in the plane’s tail.  There were two army officers sitting there.  I was told to take a seat in the last row.  The two guards stood beside me while Boldin, the officers, and the stewardess walked towards the compartment exit. Pointing at me, Boldin said something to them and they nodded in understanding. The plane’s engines were already revving up and I could not hear what they were saying, but I had some idea what the conversation was about.  When they came back, Boldin took the two guards with him and left the two officers with me.
When the airplane began ascending, the officers stopped paying attention to me.  There was no way I could escape while the airplane was in flight. Although it was prohibited, the two officers took out a bottle of vodka and began drinking. Thinking that they might start talking about me and about what they intended to do with me, I pretended to doze off. The officers carried on their own conversation.
It was prohibited to go to Magadan without a special permit.  Magadan was a forbidden zone. Before anyone could even buy a plane ticket out of Magadan, he needed special permission and a stamp in his passport.  I started thinking.  “The KGB couldn’t put me in prison in Moscow without a reason so they decided to send me to Magadan, where they can arrest me for entering a forbidden zone without permission.” Since I did not want to end up in prison for such a stupid reason, I decided to make a run for it when I had a chance.
A few hours later, the stewardess announced that the plane would be landing in Krasnoyarsk for refueling.  The plane landed, the ladder was brought up to it, and the passengers were told to disembark and to proceed to the airport building. I wanted to get out of the plane too but the officers blocked my path.  They ordered me to stay seated. Realizing that I was physically stronger than both of them and that they were already drunk, I could have pushed them aside but I did not want to start a fight that would result in a three year prison sentence.  I went back down the row but took a seat a little closer to the door.  The officers calmed down, chitchatted with the stewardess, and threw her compliments, which she enjoyed.
It became very hot in the plane.  The ventilation had been turned off.  The officers were flushed from the vodka.  One of them asked the stewardess to open the side door that served as an exit.  She opened the door and the compartment cooled off.  The officers unbuttoned the collars of their uniforms and began stretching.  I stood up too and stretched.  The moment had come and I did not want to lose it. I made it to the door in two bounds and jumped out of the airplane. After a somewhat unsuccessful landing, I felt pain in my leg but I ignored it, jumped up, and took off running without knowing where I was headed.  I only knew that I had to run.
The confused officers shouted at me from behind but they were afraid to make the jump.  As I ran, I tried to get my bearings. I saw a fence ahead of me.  It stretched a long way to the left and led to the airport building on the right.  Then I saw a gate about three hundred feet in front of me and ran toward it. After I jumped over the fence, I saw some old barracks and rushed toward them, hoping to hide and to get as far away from the airport as possible. I ran along the barracks’ narrow, muddy alleyways and leaped over mud puddles. Squawking hens darted out from under my feet and a barking dog began chasing after me.  This only increased my speed.  I kept running.
When the barracks ended, I came to a wide street with multi-storied buildings.  I stopped running and began walking calmly along the sidewalk, thinking about my situation and wondering how long it would take the officers to inform the authorities about my escape. I wondered how long it would take to have the information passed through the ranks and how soon the local KGB and police would start hunting me.
Then I had a daring idea – to get back to the airport as fast as possible and buy a ticket to Moscow.  I only had seventy rubles on me because I had left the rest of my money and belongings at Viktor’s place. Seventy rubles should be enough to buy a ticket.
I walked into the airport building and found the ticket agent for departing flights.  There were fifteen people standing there.  I took a place in line.  It moved very slowly, but when there were only two or three people ahead of me, there was an announcement on the airport intercom system:  “Citizen Perchatkin, who just arrived from Moscow, please come to the security office!”
I was astounded at the stupidity of the local KGB.  “Do they think I’m an idiot?” I wondered. I left the airport building, knowing that the hunt for me had begun.  I had not expected it so soon. Probably, the only thing on my side was that they had not had time to make copies of my photograph and to distribute them to the KGB agents, the police, and the taxi drivers working for the KGB.
After I had made my way out of the airport building, I realized that I had to stay close to the building and not venture out in the open or into the town square where there would be surveillance. I avoided any roads, where there could be police cars patrolling, and again made my way to the barracks.  I knew the KGB would not bother with this out of the way place and decided to walk through the adjoining slums and get as far away as possible from the airport.
I came to the multi-storied buildings again and found the city highway nearby. I knew I had to get beyond the Krasnoyarsk city limits so I decided to hitch hike and convince the driver to get me out of the city to God knows where.
I stood waving my hand, trying to flag down a car. “I just hope a taxi doesn’t come by,” I worried.  I did not have to wait long, maybe three minutes.  A white Zhiguli car stopped beside me.
“Where are you going?”
“What’s the nearest city?”
“Achinsk.”
“Can you drive me to Achinsk?”
“How much will you pay me?”
“How much do you want?”
“Thirty rubles should do it.”
“Let’s go!” I said climbing into the car.

When we got to Achinsk, I asked the driver to bring me to the train station.  I immediately bought a ticket to Novosibirsk, where I planned to wait for the “Vladivostock-Moscow” train that Zina was supposed to be riding.  According to my calculations, her train was due to arrive in Novosibirsk two days later.  I knew her train would make a twenty-five or thirty minute stopover in Novosibirsk, enough time for me to find her.
I was in Novosibirsk by the following morning.  I needed to get through those two days.  I did not have much money left and only hoped that Zina would have some money when I met her. In spite of my hope, I decided to preserve what I had left.  I bought only a toothbrush, toothpaste, and shaving supplies. I was afraid to go unshaven.  I did not want my unkempt appearance to draw the attention of the police, who might ask to see my passport.  Had I been dressed in jeans or sports clothes, a beard might not have been out of place, but I was wearing a stylish suit.
I shaved carefully and polished my shoes with paper.  During the day, I wandered around the town trying to pass the time and at night, I sat dozing at the train station, where I had found a place with many people around. These two days were absolute torment.  Hungry, tired, and with almost no sleep, I wandered the town.
On the second day, I tried to get some rest on a city bus. I dozed as the bus made its loop from the train station to the town and then back to the station. With so little money, I could not go to a hotel and besides, a person had to show his passport before he could register at a hotel. 
When the two days had passed, I ran through the cars of the train that had just arrived from Vladivostok.  With hope, I looked into every compartment but I only found unfamiliar faces. I wondered if I had made a mistake. Maybe Zina had left a day later.  I decided to wait for the next train.
Although there was very little hope of meeting her, I again ran through all the train cars but I did not find Zina.  “They detained her,” I concluded, but not wanting to admit it to myself, I raced through the train again, looking into every compartment.  Zina was not there.  
Realizing that I could not return home immediately because the experience of other people had taught me there was probably a warrant for my arrest on some fabricated charge, I bought a ticket to Moscow. I knew I had to get to Moscow somehow to get information to the Western diplomats and correspondents.
The train was scheduled to leave the next day and I only had five rubles left.  I needed that money in Moscow to get to Victor’s apartment from the train station. Hungry, I again wandered around the town but this time I looked forward to sleeping on the train the next day.
Three days later, I was standing at the door of Victor’s apartment.  I was worn out, thin, but cleanly shaven.  Victor opened the door and gasped, “My God! Boris, where did you come from?  Where have you been?  All Moscow is in an uproar.  Everyone knows the KGB took you but there was no further news at all. Zina called asking about you two days ago.
“What happened to Zina?”
“The KGB took her off the train at Chita but she is at home now.”
“Victor, I need to eat.  I haven’t eaten for almost a week.”
“I can see that.  I’ll get you something immediately.”
“I took a shower, drank a glass of buttermilk and a cup of hot tea, and then told Victor in detail about everything that had happened. Victor listened silently and shook his head. “This has turned into a real mess,” responded Victor.  “Every KGB agent from Vladivostok to Moscow is on the alert.  Some of them are going to lose a few stars because of this. What do you want to do now?”
“I have to finish what we started. We need to organize a press conference and tell everything.”
“It’s too late to make any calls today.  I’ll start tomorrow morning.”
We stayed up late talking.

I got up early the next morning to prepare statements for the press.  I walked over to the glass doors of the balcony, glanced down, and saw several familiar figures I had never wanted to see again.  One of them was sitting on a bench near the apartment entrance not taking his eyes from the door.  A few men pretended to be taking a walk. A KGB car was parked at the playground nearby.  I called Victor over.  He looked down and understood the situation without a word from me.  “We’ve got to arrange the press conference as soon as possible!” he said.  “I’m going to take the key, lock you in, and call the journalists from a phone booth.  I’ll call the embassy too.  Don’t open the door to anyone.  They might try to force you out of here.  It looks like my apartment is bugged.”
Victor returned a half an hour later.  “The journalists can’t come until day after tomorrow. They are fully booked tomorrow.  We have to hole up here for two days.  The apartment is surrounded on every side.  My biggest worry is that they might use a policeman to come in here and drag you out on some pretext. Let’s do it this way. We don’t leave the apartment for two days and don’t let anybody in.  If they try to force their way in, we barricade the door. 
During the next two days, our nerves were stretched to the limit.  It was exceedingly unpleasant to see the KGB agents milling around outside the apartment day and night.
When the journalists started arriving at Victor’s for the press conference, they parked their cars at the playground next to the KGB car.  Like thieves caught in the act, the agents became fidgety.  They jumped in their cars and took off.
The journalists arrived happy, noisy, and free.  It made me feel the weight of our own lack of freedom even more deeply.  It gave me the desire to resist Communist dictatorship even more.
The press conference began and I related everything that had happened in Nahodka during the last few months.  I told the journalists about the new tactics the KGB was using against believers and about the KGB’s treatment of our children.  While the press conference was going on, the doorbell rang.  Victor’s wife Shiva went to answer it and let in the late arrivers.  She came back into the room a minute later looking surprised. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, “but there are two reporters from the ‘Moscow Evening News,’ who want to attend the press conference.” 
Addressing everyone in the room, Victor asked, “Well, what should we do?”
“Did you invite them?” asked one of the journalists.
“No, no one invited them.”
“Then how did they find out about it?” asked someone else.
“I guess the KGB sent them.”
Having discussed the matter, everyone decided that the reporters from the ‘Moscow Evening News’ had no business attending the press conference. Victor went out to the door and asked the reporters how they had found out about the press conference.  The two reporters looked at each other and made no reply.  Then Victor told them clearly:  “It doesn’t matter what you might hear at the press conference because you’ll write whatever you’re told to write.  We’re not front-rank industrial workers or super fast Communist labor heroes over-fulfilling our quota for coal production.  That’s all you know how to write about. Even then, you still have to write about what and whom you’re ordered to write. Very sorry!”
They left and the press conference continued.  There were many questions.  After the press conference, we all drank tea.
I was so worried about my wife and son that I decided to fly home the same day.  Viktor and two other dissidents took me to the airport and waited until I was seated in the airplane.  They made sure that everything went okay.  I only had one wish – to get home as fast as possible even though I had a ten hour flight to Vladivostok ahead of me.    I wondered what was waiting for me in Vladivostok.  Maybe another arrest?  At the very least, the KGB would be waiting for me.  The best I could hope for was interrogation. I was upset.  Why had I dragged Zina into the war? Not only Zina, but our baby too. I blamed myself.  In cases like this one, the KGB had no pity – not for women and not for children. “But they haven’t arrested me yet,” I reasoned, “they’re afraid of making a scene. That means everything must be okay with Zina and Oleg.”
I tilted the seat back, closed my eyes, and slipped back into pleasant memories of that wonderful Spring, when I met the wonderful woman, who became my wife…the birth of our first son… It’s springtime, the first of May, and everything is in bloom.  Then suddenly, it’s snowing. I know it’s a sign…a wonderful child has been born to me.  And he was a wonderful child, a precious angel. I remember his tender voice, his first steps…now he is two years old standing at a mud puddle catching fish.  Now he’s three and his grandmother is singing to him.  Now he’s in school...his first music recital.  He’s nervous but sings sadly about a lost dog.  Then he’s pretending to lead a church service.  “I’m the pastor!” he tells his younger brothers and sisters.  “Vitaliy, you play the piano. Ludmilla, Boris, and Alla, you sing in the choir!
“Oleg,” remarks his sister Ludmilla, “There’s no one to sit in the church!”
I laughed as I watched it all.  “Don’t worry,” I offered, “Mama and I will sit in the church.

Much to my astonishment, there were no KGB agents waiting for me when I got back to Nahodka. 

Chapter 18
Checkmate

A month later, I received notification from Boris Chernoblsky by a telegram wishing me a happy birthday.  As we had agreed, the telegram meant that I had to get to Moscow to meet with important people in Western politics one week later.
I knew I had to find a new way of getting to Moscow.  Zina and I spent the next day in fasting and prayer.  We asked God to provide the means of attending this meeting.  We were very worried as we considered every possible way of getting to Moscow.I finally decided to use the KGB itself.  The plan was desperate and dangerous but I put my hope in God.
“Zina,” I asked, “Do you still have the telephone number of the KGB director?  Remember, the one who tried to recruit you as an informer?”
“Yes, I saved it.  But why do you need it?”
“It’s time for you to become an ‘informer,’ just for a little while. Call Ufimtsev and make an appointment.”
Although Zina knew there was no other alternative, she protested for a long time.  After she had thought more about it, she agreed.  She called Ufimtsev that day and told him, “I have business to discuss with you.”
Zina had a dangerous and difficult task before her. She had to play her part in such a way that everything seemed natural and did not rouse KGB suspicion. My biggest fear was that the KGB agents might catch on and begin playing their own game. It was like standing on a scale, wondering who would outweigh whom. It was war, or rather the continuation of a war of nerves that had been going on for four years in spite of the fact that our strength and resources were not equally matched.  If the KGB lost the war, a few agents might be demoted or lose a few stars from their shoulders.  If we lost, we would lose our freedom and maybe, like Shelkov and Sneirev, our lives.  The KGB had the whole government behind it and the dark powers of hell but we had our belief in God and the desire to serve His people.
An hour later, Zina was sitting in the KGB director’s office. “I came because of your invitation.”
“Why have you come now and not when I invited you?”
“I needed time to think about it, for things to come to a head.  It was a miracle that Boris managed to escape arrest in Krasnoyarsk. During my last trip, I finally realized what it means to be arrested.  I don’t believe my husband will succeed.  This senseless war has been going on for four years. I’m sick of it. I’m exhausted from the constant worry, from the searches, from the arrests.  I want to live like everybody else.  I want to live quietly with my children and husband.  Help me like you promised!”
Zina started crying and Ufimtsev made a fuss over her, giving her a glass of water and telling her to calm down.  He was triumphant.
“All the same, just why did you choose to come today?”
Zina felt like she was walking on thin ice.  She realized that it was not quite so easy to deceive Ufimtsev.  She got herself under control and continued.  “Now he wants to make another trip to some meeting!”
“Well, well, well!” replied Ufimtsev nervously, tapping his fingers on the table.  “Well, well, well.  We do have some information about that.  You’ve confirmed our information.”
“Please do something to stop Boris from going!  He’ll be arrested there.”
Zina looked pleadingly at Ufimtsev.  He stopped tapping his fingers on the table and looked at Zina intently without blinking his eyes.  “Do you want to help your husband?  Where will the meeting be?”
“I don’t know.  Boris doesn’t even know.  When he gets to Moscow, he will be told where to go.”
“When does he intend to leave?”
“Sometime this week.”
“By what route?”
‘I don’t know.  He says they have worked out some kind of new route that the KGB will never guess.”
Ufimtsev paused a few moments and then said decisively, “Zina, let him go.  Let him meet those people and discuss whatever they want.  It’s okay, just as long as we know what they are up to. Zina, you should travel with them. Don’t worry about anything.  Everything will be okay. There’s only one condition.  Don’t leave him alone.  You have to see and hear everything that goes on there and then tell us.  If you let us know everything he’s planning to do, we can stop him when things get too dangerous. It’s only with your help that we can stop him from committing acts that could put him in prison.”
“But I can’t make him take me along.  I don’t even know how he’s going to get there.  Maybe he’ll ride on a freight train.  Maybe they’ll take him three hundred miles through the ‘taiga’ on a motorcycle. I can’t go with him that way.  He wouldn’t even consider taking me if he took that kind of route anyway.”
Ufimtsev started tapping his fingers on the table again.  “Have you been to see your parents recently?” he asked.  “They live in the Ukraine, don’t they?”
“Yes, in the Ukraine.  It’s been five years since we’ve seen them.”
“That’s too bad.  It’s been so many years since you visited them.  Why don’t you start a fight with your husband, tell him you want to visit your parents, and insist on accompanying him.  Take the train to Khabarovsk as usual and from there, get a plane to Moscow. You see, we know all his routes.”
“That’s the normal route but Boris may not agree to it.  Besides, its impossible to get plane tickets in summer without ordering them two weeks or a month in advance.”
“Well, well, well! Then take a train to Komsomolsk-na-Amur.  You’ll lose half a day but Boris has never departed from there before.  He won’t suspect a thing.  Don’t worry about tickets.  There will be tickets waiting for you. We will arrange everything.  Just make sure he doesn’t leave without you.”

A week later, I met with a group of American Congressmen.  I told them about the precarious situation of religious believers in the Soviet Union and asked their help in getting about thirty people, who were in grave danger, out of the USSR.  At the same meeting, I received an invitation to meet with a group of American Senators three weeks later.
After the meeting, Zina and I went to visit her parents.  We spent a few days there and then friends of ours invited us to Suhumi on the shores of the Black Sea.  Zina and I had a real vacation for the first time in years. We swam in the Black Sea, sunbathed on the beach, and then went on excursions to the Novi Afon caves and to Lake Ritsa.  “This is compensation for the rest you failed to get on your hunting trip,” laughed Zina.
 This happy time passed quickly but we knew we had to get back to Moscow. We walked along the sandy beach for the last time.  The wind was blowing in from the sea, carrying the fresh smell of water and the sharp, distinctive scent of the ocean.  The wind grew stronger and the waves grew larger.  They rolled onto the shore with a roar and showered us with fountains of salty spray. Somewhere in the distance we could hear the sound of thunder.
   
   When I met with the group of Senators, I told them the same things I had told the Congressmen.  I asked for their support and requested that they let the Soviet representatives know that they were aware of our situation.  I gave them a list of people, who were in danger, and asked them to help these people emigrate. I did not include my own name.
Later, some of these congressmen and senators organized a committee to fight for our defense but it was already too late to help the people on the lists.   The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan and was no longer paying any attention to world opinion. There began a time of open terrorism against anyone who opposed Communism.  No one on the list was allowed to leave at that time.

We returned home in the middle of September.  The ‘Voice of America’ had already broadcast news about my meeting with the American Congressmen and Senators.  This was the first time that official, Western representatives had met with a representative of the underground, Pentecostal Church and, on such a high level, discussed the problems of believers in the USSR and their desire to emigrate for religious reasons. 
In my opinion, all had gone well.  At least I was sure that our situation had been well enough publicized that there would be no massive terrorist activity against us but the thought that Zina still had to meet with Ufimtsev gave me no peace.
A week after our return to Nahodka, when Ufimtsev did not receive the call he expected from Zina, he suddenly appeared before her on the street.  “How was your trip?  We heard that Boris met with some American Senators and Congressmen. You probably have lots of news for us. How did the meeting go? We’ve been waiting for your call.”
“What Congressmen? What Senators?” she replied in surprise.  “What meeting are you talking about?”  Zina walked around him.
Ufimtsev was taken aback.  The smile disappeared from his face. He understood everything. “You won’t get away with this!” 
As Zina walked away, Ufimtsev shouted threats at her.

The Church Congress was held a month later but I was not able to attend. Prokopchik, Onischenko, and Istomin went instead. I was elected secretary of the Council of Churches in absentia.  After that, I was only able to visit Moscow once, in 1981, with  Vitaliy Istomin.  That was the last trip before my arrest. I did not know then that six years would pass before I would return to Moscow.

Chapter 19
The ‘Laughing Room’

The weekend passed and the morning inspection was completed but for some reason, I was not called to interrogation. I had another day to rest.
By this time, I had found out more information about the first building. In the left wing, on the first floor, there were twenty-four cells for extremely dangerous prisoners. In the right wing, there were cells for death-row prisoners, who had been scheduled for execution by shooting.  Those cells were almost directly below our cells.  About twice a month, they took some death row prisoners out from the cell by night.  Some of them screamed as they were led to the prison courtyard, where a special car and special guards were waiting. After hearing their screams, I could not sleep for the rest of the night.
Once I heard a woman screaming. “Where are you taking me? Where? I don’t want to go! Please put me back in the cell! Are you really taking me there?  Please tell me.”
I was terrified. “Why are they taking this woman to be shot?” I asked Boris.
“Same as the rest,” replied Boris, “for high scale embezzlement, for high scale, illegal currency dealings, or for murder. She’s screaming because she doesn’t know they’re not executing anyone here in Vladivostok right now.  She’ll be sent to Novosibirsk under guard. That’s where they do all the executions for prisoners from Siberia and the Far East. They used to do the executions in Khabarovsk, Irkutsk, and Vladivostok but they decided it was not cost effective to have an executioner in each prison. Since prisoners were not shot every day, the executioners were only working part-time.  Now death row prisoners are transported to Novosibirsk from other areas and the executioner has a full time job.  Labor camp riots keep him supplied.  The brothers there can’t endure the conditions, start rioting, and maybe kill a guard.  Then, many of them are sentenced to execution by shooting. Many people are taken from the camps and shot.
On the left wing’s second floor were cells for Chinese defectors.  For the most part, these were Chinese who had heard Soviet radio broadcasts in the Chinese language and fled their country for our Soviet, Communist paradise. There were twenty-seven Chinese prisoners on our floor, all considered to be secret agents. They were usually given two or three years in a labor camp for entering the country illegally and then sent to some remote area in the Khabarovsk or Amur regions.
The female prisoners were kept in the same wing.
On the right wing were cells for juveniles from fourteen to eighteen years of age. These were cells for juveniles under investigation but if there was a lack of space somewhere else, adult prisoners were put there. If there was overcrowding in the juvenile cells, the young people were put in adult cells but, generally, they tried to keep the juveniles separate from the adults.
On the third and fourth floors were cells for prisoners still under investigation. They were designed to hold four people but always held ten to sixteen people.
The fifth and sixth floors had been added during the Brezhnev era. There were large cells there, each holding twenty to sixty prisoners. The exercise yards were on the roof of the sixth floor.
The prison had been built in 1904, before the Revolution, but the biggest wave of construction and the enlargement of the prison had taken place during the last years of the Brezhnev regime.
Another six-story building stood opposite the first building. Construction continued on it day and night. Prisoners were providing the labor.  For the most part, they worked without equipment and using their bare hands. They carried everything – bricks, mortar, and concrete on litters.
Construction was just being completed on an underground prison, which had been hewed out from a cliff, opposite the first building but on the other side.
I found out all this information from two prisoners, who had been working on the construction, slipped up somehow, and were being transferred to a labor camp.  There were terrible rumors going around about the construction of this underground prison. All the rumors hinted at some kind of political changes in our country.

Life went on as usual in cell five-three.  After we got rid of our informer, they sent us a new prisoner.  When he entered the cell, he was disheveled, confused, and frightened.  He looked to be about forty years old.  Since we had so many people in our cell, we were very careful about checking for fleas. That was Anatoly’s job.
Anatoly made the newcomer check all the seams of his clothing because fleas usually hide there. Fydor, the newcomer, whom we quickly nicknamed ‘Fedoska’, checked his underwear as carefully as a jeweler checking his wares. As I watched Fedoska, I realized that there was something wrong with his mind.
  When Fedoska finished checking his clothing, he told us everything was fine but then Anatoly started checking his clothing. “You’re a real dog,” he remarked. “How did you manage to breed such a herd of fleas? Did they drop you in like a paratrooper to breed more fleas?”
He began whacking Fedoska in the face with his underwear. Fedoska stood there naked except for a short T-shirt and looked at everyone stupidly.  “They don’t ever bite me,” he said guiltily,
Boris walked up to him saying, “We’ve got to get rid of this clothing.”
“I have some extra clothing,” I offered, “but it’s too big for him.”
“Give us the shirt and we’ll find him some underwear and trousers.”
“Brothers,” said Boris, addressing everyone in the cell. “Who has some extra underwear and trousers?”  We got Fedoska dressed.

Boris walked over to the door and began fussing with the round peephole, which was covered by rubber on the corridor side. The dubaks could lift the rubber and look into the cell to see what was going on but there was no way we could see what was going on in the corridor.  Boris lit a match and heated the glass.  Then he threw water on it.  The glass cracked. Then he took a needle, widened the crack, and pushed the rubber covering aside.  He began watching what was going on in the corridor.  Without taking his eyes from the peephole, he called me over to him. “Want to catch a performance from the corridor? Take a look.”
I began looking through the peephole. A young dubak named Sasha was walking down the corridor.  No more than twenty-five years old, he had a face resembling a rodent. He scurried up and down the corridor like a rat and peeked into the cells holding juvenile offenders.  For some reason, he was interested in those cells.  He ran from one cell to another until finally, he stood peeking into one particular cell, the one almost opposite ours. 
“Why is he hanging around there?” I asked Boris.
“Oh, he probably caught them sending a ‘horse’.”
I continued watching.  Sasha opened the door and brought out a youngster about fifteen years old.  The boy was shorter than average, thin. His clothing hung on him.  The dubak closed the cell door and stood alone with the boy in the corridor.  The boy looked fearfully from side to side. 
The dubak took small, slinking steps around the boy and then suddenly hit him in the stomach.  The boy gasped and writhed in pain. Waiting until the boy had straightened himself up again, the dubak gave him another lightening strike. The boy began writhing again. Then everything was repeated again.  I finally realized that the dubak was hitting him in the most sensitive areas.  When the boy was hit for the fourth time, he fell writhing on the floor.  I began kicking the steel door.
The dubak looked at our door.  Playing with the big prison key and moving with a kind of dancing gait, he walked to our door and noticed that the rubber had been pushed aside. He opened the feeding trough.
“What are you unhappy about, Mr. Criminal?”
I had never called people names but I could not hold back.  “”Hey, you prison rat, what do you think you’re doing?  Why are you beating him?  He’s only a child.  Is that what Communist morality taught you?”
The dubak’s ruddy face grew red.
“What did you call me? Say it again.”
“You prison rat, you Communist cur, you belong in a cell. I’m going to write the prosecutor a letter and file a complaint about you.”
The dubak grew even more red, cursed, ground his teeth, and slammed the feeding trough shut.
“He seems to know why you’re here under investigation,” said Boris.  “If he weren’t afraid of the KGB, he would have called a whole detachment to drag you to the ‘laughing room.’ He’s afraid to touch you without their permission. Listen Boris, the ‘laughing room’ has walls padded with thick felt.  You can’t hear a thing from there.  They would have beat in your lungs or liver there and you would have come out coughing blood.  Writing complaints doesn’t help. That dubak works on the Chechen’s shift, you remember, the one who put you in ‘little bed-bug.’ The complaint would only get as far as the Chechen.  He would tear it up, throw it away, and heap praise on the dubak.  They are trying to develop their karate skills, especially by practicing on the young.  You won’t get anywhere here by complaining. I earned another term that way.” 
“I was under investigation for my first offence for money speculation.” explained Boris.  “I had gone with my wife to visit her relatives in the Baltics.  I got a few spare parts there for my car.  Thinking I could cover some of my travel expenses, I decided to sell the parts and got caught. My case was coming along so well, I thought I might get released.  I thought I had managed to get out of the mess.  When I got back from interrogation, there was the same kind of kid sitting in our ‘house’ and crying, ‘Mama, mama, I want to go home.” He kept crying for a couple of days.  Then, after an inspection, a dubak took him out into the corridor. We could hear him start beating the boy. The kid was screaming so loud, I couldn’t stand it.  I started hitting the feeding trough with my fist.  I had the king piece from the chess game in my hand.  When the dubak opened the trough, I pretended I wanted to tell him something and gestured for him to come closer. When he stuck his ugly mug through the trough, I let him have it with the king.  I didn’t think I’d get him in the eye.  The dubak had to have a glass eye put in.  He probably got a medal, but I got my liver kicked in.  Ever since, I haven’t been able to live without medicine.  Well, I got eight years added to my sentence.  I spent them rolling logs on Sakhalin Island, where they were logging trees. I worked in –40-degree temperatures and lost my health.  When I was released, I was sick.  My wife had left me.  She married again while I was still in the labor camp.  I was free for only four months. I went out drinking to bury my sorrow.  I was walking along the street and saw the two of them walking together hand in hand. My wife saw me and hid behind him.  Well, I punched her new husband in the snout.  Now I'm being twisted around for assault. I could get up to five years.  If I do get five years, I probably won’t make it.”

A few days passed but they still did not order me to interrogation.  I rested physically and emotionally.  It is amazing how perception changes.  The first time I landed in a cell, it seemed horrible to me.  I thought I would never get used to the dark walls, the bars, the cement floor, the light burning twenty-four hours a day, and the disgusting pig-slop. I thought I could not endure the unbearable prison stench and the continual infestation of bed bugs, cockroaches, and fleas that sometimes required us to inspect our clothing twice a day.  Once I had spent time in the ‘jar,’ the cell did not seem so bad.  It really seemed like home.  They don’t call a cell a ‘home’ by accident. No matter how horrible the cell seems at first, once a person has made the rounds of prison’s hell, he admits the cell is not so bad after all.    

 

Chapter 20
The Sermon on the Mount

No one noticed the cell door opening until we saw a guard nicknamed Arlekino standing in the doorway.  “Everyone stand at attention! Don’t move!” he shouted.  A few dubaks stood behind him, holding sharpened, steel switches in their hands.  “If you have any forbidden items, I’m telling you to turn them over voluntarily or we will have to turn everything upside down and rip open the mattresses.  Who’s in charge today?”
“I am,” answered Fedoska.
“Do you have any forbidden items?”
“Sure, we have forbidden items,” I said. “Fedoska brought us some fleas but we threw them out.  Now we only have bedbugs and cockroaches.  We’d like to get rid of them too.”
Arlekino stared at me with malice. “Hands behind your heads!” he shouted. “Go out in the corridor one by one!  Get moving!” As we ran by him one by one, he gave us a lash with his switch. 
There were more dubaks waiting in the corridor.  “Face the wall and don’t move!” shouted one of them. 
Petya, the dubak who had been on duty the day Shurik sewed his lips together, was standing with the other dubaks in the corridor.  Next to him stood Yarovoi, a prison trustee, who took the slop around and washed the floors. Rumor had it that Yarovoi was an inveterate stool pigeon, who would not hesitate to inform on anyone, dubaks and prisoners alike.
Arlekino and Petya began searching the cell while the other dubaks began searching us.  As I stood facing the wall, I noticed a little red button on the wall.  Wanting to touch it for some reason, I took my right hand from my head.  Almost immediately, burning blows from the metal switches poured down on me. The switches whistled as they bit into my body.  I turned sharply and was struck on the forehead.  The skin split and blood began pouring down my face.  This stopped the dubaks.
Arlekina rushed out from the cell.  He had heard what was going on in the corridor.  When he saw the blood on my face, he became furious.  “You idiots!  What have you done?  There was no order to beat them, only to turn the cell upside down! Now you’ll answer to the KGB.  Because of you, he’ll slander us abroad and say we beat him in jail.” 
Suddenly he had a new idea. He turned to the prisoners saying, “Nobody beat him, did they? Nobody bothered him.”
“Yeah, nobody beat him,” replied the trustee Yarovoi. “He hit his head on the wall.”
I went to wash my face and pressed a handkerchief to my forehead.  The search continued. Arlikeno stepped out of the cell again asking, “Whose pills are these?  What kind of pills are they?”
“Those are my pills,” responded Boris.
“We don’t issue this kind of pill in the dispensary.  Where did you get them?  Are they narcotics?”
“No, I have liver problems.  I’ve used those pills for years.  They’re called  ‘No-schpa.’ My mother sends them to me.”
“Do you have a prescription from a doctor for them?”
“Everything is in my file.  You can check.”
“I’m confiscating these pills. They are not allowed in prison.  They are imported pills.  Well, you don’t seem to have any other forbidden items.
Just then the trustee Yarovoi made a suggestion. “Citizen guard, let me search.  I know where they hide things.”  He had been in the cell before and did know where things could be hidden.
Arlekino gave him permission although they had already found what they needed.  Arlekino ran into the cell.  About ten minutes later, he came out triumphantly carrying some tea wrapped in plastic, a homemade shaving kit, and several razors.  “See,” he said. “They haven’t been to the bathhouse for more than a week but they’re all clean shaven.”
Arlekino praised him.  “You are a good man but it won’t do to set you free.”
They returned us to the cell.  Everything was in disarray.  I knew this was the work of Bykov. He had decided to get revenge on Boris for refusing to spy on me.

That evening, as usual, I told them the next chapter of the New Testament.  It was the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.  I repeated the Sermon on the Mount. 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.  
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the
    kingdom of heaven…”

“That’s a powerful part!” said one of the prisoners, an engineer who had worked at the Vladivostok port. “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness….  Boy, would I like to trade places with you.  Suffering for truth … that’s a big honor.  I’m sitting here for taking bribes.  I’m ashamed to be here, but your situation is completely different.  It would be a pleasure to change places with you.”
“If you live by the truth, if you fulfill Christ’s commandments, you will have many chances to suffer for truth.  That’s what happened to Jesus and his disciples.  That’s what happens to all his followers.”
Everyone was silent for a long time.  Finally, the engineer spoke up saying, “Brothers, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to stop swearing and smoking from this day on.”
Fedoska backed him up saying, “It’s possible to live without smoking. I don’t smoke.  Why smoke. It’s already hard to breathe in here.  Why don’t we all stop smoking?  It’s not good for us.  It only causes damage.”
“Boy, are you persistent!” remarked Anatoly. “Have you started being humble too?  If I were to start eating your slop for you, would you be humble or would you punch me in the head?”
Fedoska was confused.  “I’d be humble. How could I punch you in the head?  If I even thought about punching you, you would punch me first.”  
Everyone laughed. 
“That’s enough laughing at him,” said Boris. “He’s telling the truth.  I don’t smoke either.”
Everyone in the cell decided to quit smoking but Anatoly.  “I’m going to continue swearing and smoking until I manage to throw a flea on the interrogator.  If I’m called to interrogation tomorrow, I’m going to unload a few fleas on the old goat.  Let him scratch!  I have to get revenge on Yarovoi too for taking the tea and the shaving kit.”
Anatoly walked to the throne. “Eight-five, eight-five, please come in,” he shouted
“This is eight-five.  We hear you,” came the answer through the pipe.
“Do you have any fleas? “Send a few fleas to five-three on the horse but be sure they are big breeders.  If you don’t have any, ask around the other cells.”
About half an hour later, the horse arrived with a couple of great big, black fleas, wrapped in plastic for Anatoly.  He was ecstatic.  “Wow!  These are real breeders.  They’ll start a whole herd.”
He took a matchbox and carefully shook the fleas into it saying, “Be fruitful and multiply in the interrogator’s underpants.  I’m sending you in like paratroopers to jump on his wife, too.  The old goat won’t know what’s going on, so don’t lose any time - multiply!” 

The next day, I was ordered to interrogation.  I was even more astonished at interrogator Istomin’s arrogance.  He put some papers down in front of me.  They were the rough drafts of my complaints, protests, and appeals to various agencies of the Soviet government.   The rough draft of my appeal to Brezhnev was among them. The interrogator accused me of perpetrating slander and anti-Soviet propaganda.
  “First of all,” I explained, “those are rough drafts. I was only writing down my thoughts.  Is thinking against the law?  Why don’t you announce that officially?”
“What are you talking about?  It’s not against the law to think. You can think whatever you like.  Your thoughts can even differ from official ideology but if you write them down, then it’s slander and anti-Communist propaganda, even rough drafts.”
“But Article 190 and 70 only refer to dissemination, not to writing rough drafts.”
“How stupid do you think we are?  Did you write this down so you could remember it?  No, you wrote it down so you could disseminate it.  You wrote a complaint to the prosecutor.  You spread slander by saying you are being oppressed.  Here’s another example.  You wrote letters defending Sharansky, Ginsburg, Orlov, and Yakunin.  Those letters were slanderous.  You called them honest people but the court had convicted them of being criminals.  Do you still stand by what you wrote in the rough drafts or do you repent now and acknowledge that they were errors?”
“Are you asking me to confess that I wasn’t thinking correctly or do I have to confess that I didn’t keep my thoughts quiet and ended up in prison for it?”
“Both.  It would be a lesson for other people.”
“Do you think you can frighten me now, after all you’ve done to me in prison?  I did nothing wrong.  I don’t intend to recant a thing.
“Okay,” said the interrogator turning to his assistant, Lt. Svinchuk.  “Write this all down.”  He began dictating his questions and his own paraphrased versions of my answers.
“Why aren’t you writing down what I say immediately and using my exact words?” I asked.
“You won’t sign anything anyway.  What difference does it make what I write?”
The interrogator was mocking me.  He wanted to show me that I was completely in his hands.

When they brought me back to the KGB car to transport me from the KGB prison back to Vladivostok prison, I was amazed to see a bottle of wine, some apples, and some cheese and sausage sandwiches in the car.  We were almost half way back to the prison, when the old guard said, “Well, maybe we should go for a ride in the country. We can get a little rest.  Boris can go with us and get a little fresh air.  He’s tired of being in the cell.”
I knew it was a set-up, ordered by Istomin.  “Take me back to the prison,” I demanded.
“How come?” asked the old guard.  “We can take a little rest, talk some…”
“Why are you so talkative now?  All I’ve ever heard from you is ‘take one step to the right or left and I’ll shoot without warning.’ Now, suddenly, you want me to go out into the country and have a little talk. What are you going to do there? Shoot me for trying to escape?  Don’t set me up.  Take me back to the prison.  I’m not taking one step out of this car until we get to the prison.  You’ll have to shoot me here.”
The young guard kept silent but the old guard began swearing at me. “You piece of garbage, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”
Then he shouted to the driver,” Take him back to the stinking prison since he likes it so much.  Let him rest there.”
When we drove up to the prison, the young guard began teasing the old guard saying “Hey, old man, give Boris the sandwiches.”
“He can’t have them.  Let him gorge on pig slop.”

Chapter 21
The Death of a Friend

To my amazement, I was not sent to the ‘jar.’ They brought me back to my cell.  Anatoly and Fedoska were not in the cell. They were in interrogation.  Boris was lying on the bunk and the engineer was sitting nearby.  Already November, it was cold in the cell.  Boris was wearing his jacket and cap but he was shivering.  His breathing was heavy.
“Brothers, please excuse me.  The tuberculosis has probably flared up again. I had it before but when I got out of prison, I wasn’t able to do anything about it.  Now I feel rotten.  My liver is bothering me too – ever since Arlekino took my pills.”
He lay there looking pale and yellow.  He felt cold but there was perspiration on his face.  I went to the door and began knocking on it, trying to call the dubak on duty.
“Forget it,” said Boris.  “I already asked for a doctor.  They brought me some pills but they hand out these pills for every ailment.  I have to be examined by a doctor before they’ll give me back my pills and the doctor won’t be here until next week.”
“Then we could check around the prison to see if someone has that kind of pill,” I suggested.
The engineer sent a ‘horse’ around the prison.  Then all we could do was wait.  Twenty minutes later, we received an aspirin and an hour later, one ‘No-shpa’ pill.  Boris swallowed the aspirin and the ‘No-shpa,’ then turned to me.  “Boris,” he said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you this for a long time.  How do you pray?”
“I’m interested in that question too,” said the engineer.
“God is our Father, our Friend.  Prayer isn’t some kind of ritual. It’s intimate friendship with God.  Approach God the same way you would approach your father or your best friend for help.  You don’t need memorized words.”
I suggested that we all pray, and the three of us prayed together for the first time. The other prisoners stood up but they did not pray.  They were not ready yet.
Boris began feeling a little better. When Anatoly and Fedoska were brought back to the cell that evening, Anatoly announced joyfully, “Congratulate me on my paratroopers’ successful landing!  I asked the interrogator for a glass of water and when the old goat turned around, I shook the fleas onto his back.”
Fedoska was morose.  No one knew why he was in prison.  He never said anything. We only knew that he had been an ensign in the Navy.  We had all realized that he needed treatment, not prison.  Fedoska told all the dubaks that he was innocent and that he had no reason to be in prison.  He honestly believed that the dubaks could send him home and asked them continuously, “Citizen dubak, please send me home. I have no reason to be here.  My wife was beaten and I was beaten.  I was put in prison too.” Fedoska did not even understand that the word ‘dubak’ was an insult for the guards.  He had heard the prisoners calling them that among themselves and had just repeated what he had heard.
A few days later, Fedoska starting banging on the feeding trough and shouting, “Citizen dubak, give me a weapon.  The war has started and everybody has weapons but me.”  He stood crying at the feeding trough, “Why don’t they trust me with a weapon?  The Chinese are attacking and I don’t have a weapon.”
The dubak observed him through the feeding trough with interest. Then he opened the door, took a broom, and handed it to Fedoska.  “Here’s your weapon.  Go fight!”
Fedoska took the broom, stood at attention, saluted the dubak, and shouted, “I serve the Soviet Union” and began marching around the cell. We tried getting the broom away from him and getting him to lie down on the bunk but he did not listen to anyone. “Attack! Advance!” he shouted and rushed out into the corridor with the broom.
The dubak repelled his attack with a kick. “Fight in there,” he said pointing to our cell.
Fedoska began crawling on the concrete floor.  He crawled under the bunk, poked the broom out from under it, and began imitating shots from a machine gun.  The dubak called the prison supervisor.  As they watched Fedoska, they could hardly keep from laughing.  We were shocked and demanded that they take Fedoska to the doctor but the dubak responded, “It’s nothing.  He’s harmless.  He’s just playing war.
That night Fedoska started shouting again.  “Paratroopers, get your chutes ready!  Then he leaped headfirst from the top bunk.  Fedoska hit his head and lost consciousness.  He was taken from the cell.  We never saw him again and never heard another word about him.

Boris became worse and worse.  He was no longer able to go out for exercise and spent most of his time lying on the bunk. He ate very little and drank more. We collected our sugar and gave it to him.  He refused, but we tried to convince him that he needed something to sustain him.  
A week later, the doctor came to the cell.  He began examining Boris, took his temperature, felt his pulse, and listened to his heart and lungs.  “Young man, with your health, why did you decide to land in prison?  You are so yellow.  Your health is rotten.  We’re going to admit you to the prison hospital.  I’ll send the orderlies right away.”  Then turning to us, he said, “Help him gather up his things.”
Boris began protesting.  “This is a bad sign.  I’ll gather up my things.  I’ll do it myself.  I’ll walk out without help.  If someone has to be carried out of here, he never comes back.  I have to make it to spring.  The sun will warm things up then and there will be fresh air.  In summer, I’ll get over this illness.” 
He slowly collected his things with his thin, weak hands.  “Well, that’s all,” he said.  Then breathing heavily, he sat down and asked me to write down my address for him.  The orderlies arrived.  Boris stood up, walked to me, and smiled. “I’ll find you Boris.  Forgive me that I don’t say goodbye.  Prison tradition forbids that.”
“Get well.  We’ll meet again.” What I said and what I felt were two different things. I knew we would never meet again.
Boris turned around, refused help from the orderlies, and slowly walked out of the cell.  
My feelings did not deceive me.  I never saw Boris again, but a year later, I heard about him.  A prisoner was transferred into our cell from the prison hospital. I was continuing to preach in the evenings.  He listened and then remarked, “We had a Baptist in the hospital too.  His name was Boris, too. He preached to us until he died.”  
I asked him to describe everything in detail.  I discovered that Boris had not made it to summer.  He had died in April. 
 
Chapter 22
New Year’s Celebration in Prison
  
	I was being called to interrogation every day. The interrogator already understood that it was pointless trying to break me and no longer made much effort to force me into providing the evidence they needed. I was sent to the ‘jar’ less frequently.  It was obvious that something had gone wrong with the KGB’s case against me and that they were trying to bring matters to a close quickly. A few days before concluding the investigation, they brought me to the supervisor of the prison’s KGB department. Lt. Colonel Bykov from the regional KGB was there too.
“Well, how are things going?” asked Bykov.
“I’m in prison.  How do you think they’re going?
“How’s the investigation proceeding?”
“It’s proceeding just they way you arranged it.  That’s how.”
“Well, that’s not quite correct. The investigation is not going the way we planned.  You are resisting us.  You are not confessing your guilt.  You have a family waiting for you.  Do you want to get out of here?   Why are you silent?  There is a way out.  Admit your guilt.  Admit you were wrong.  I promise that you’ll go home.  Well, you don’t have to admit your guilt to me.  Talk about it on television or write an article in the newspaper.”
“It’s up to you to prove my guilt. What crime did I commit?”
“A person can’t be right in everything.  You did wrong somewhere.  Figure out where you were wrong and admit your guilt, part of it at least.”
You’re the ones who committed crimes against us.  When I started publicizing your crimes, you put me in prison.  Now you can’t prove me guilty and are even suggesting I become my own prosecutor in return for my freedom.  You know very well what they did to me here.  You know what I suffered.  Everything was done on your orders. You tried to prove me guilty by torturing me. I will never plead guilty.”
“Well, think about it anyway.  You have time. When you’ve made up your mind, you can let me know anytime.  Tell any guard and he will get the information to me.”

After my conversation with Bykov, I was transferred to another cell, number 211 in the second bloc.  The inmates in cell 211 were varied in age and by the crimes they had committed.  There were two men named Eugene.  They were both intellectuals. One of them had worked as a captain’s assistant until his arrest.  He was serving time for taking bribes.  He was involved in the same case as the engineer who had been in cell five-three with me.  The other Eugene was a twenty-three year old, professional singer, who did not know why he was in prison.  The victim of some misunderstanding, he had been arrested and detained in prison for ‘stealing’ his own tape recorder. Nicholas, who was nicknamed ‘the bookworm,’ had been imprisoned for selling a few books from his own, personal library at a price higher than the government’s.  He had been accused of ‘speculation.’  Another inmate was in for murder.  He had killed his wife’s parents. The other inmates were thieves and drug addicts.
The other prisoners in the cell had heard about me and accepted me well. Just as I had done in cell 53, I preached to the prisoners in the evening.
Cell number 211 was the usual four-person cell but there were from ten to fifteen men in it now. At night, the cell’s cement floor was covered with mattresses.  If someone had to go to the toilet, it was very difficult to avoid stepping on someone.  The cell was very cold.  In winter, the window was covered with a second grate and all the crevices were pasted over with paper.  In winter, it was forbidden to open the window.  The concrete walls were always wet and seeped water because of the lack of air circulation and the large number of people.  The wall by the window was frozen and all covered with ice.  The mattresses belonging to the people sleeping on the floor near the wall were frozen to the floor.  The prisoners slept two to a mattress.  They used the second mattress as a blanket since they had not been issued blankets.  Everyone slept with all their clothes on and wore hats on their heads.  The stench in the cell was incredible.  Although cell five-three had been aired out occasionally, this cell got its only ventilation from the corridor.  When we were brought out for exercise, we asked the dubak to leave the door open but not every dubak agreed.
A few days later, I was ordered to see the supervisor of the prison’s KGB department again.  When the guards brought me into the office, there were two unfamiliar men sitting there.  They looked at me with curiosity.  Then one of them said, “We are representatives from the regional press.”  He introduced himself saying, “I’m Novoselov.”
“I’m Nikolaev,” said the other man.
“We want to interview you and write about incidents in your criminal activity,” explained Novoselov.
“Okay,” I responded, “but where did you get the idea that I’m a criminal.  There hasn’t been a trial yet.  The trial might vindicate me but you’re ready to write about me as if I were a criminal.  Of course, you already know that it’s not really the court that decides.  It’s the KGB.  The court will do whatever the KGB orders.  That means you’re cooperating with the KGB. So what’s there to talk about?   You already have the fact that you met with me.  You’ll end up writing whatever you’re told to write.  It doesn’t make any sense to answer your questions.”
“Why are you saying that, Boris? We will write everything you tell us. Of course, we won’t advertise your beliefs but we will write everything else you tell us.’
“If you agree to write about what’s going on in prison, I’ll answer your questions.”
“What is going on here?” asked Novoselov.
“How is it that you managed to find out about me but you don’t know a thing about the crimes that have been going on behind these walls for decades? Step out of this office and walk about forty-five feet to the left.  You’ll see a few little doors in the wall.  Open one of the doors.  You’ll see a box in the wall.  It’s lined with metal and studded with nails.  Those boxes in the wall are called ‘jars,’ even if they look more like coffins.  They put prisoners in there, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for the whole day. I’ve spent more than two hundred hours there myself.  Why don’t you write about the chemical torture here?”
“You’re lying,” said Novoselov indignantly.  “It’s not possible.”
“There, you see, you don’t believe me.  You’re calling me a liar.”
“Let’s call the KGB director and ask him,” suggested Nikolaev.
“Yeah.  Check it out first.  It will only take a few seconds. You consider anything you don’t like hearing a ‘lie.’”
“Okay,” agreed Novoselov.
He dialed the telephone and a few minutes later, the prison’s KGB director arrived. 
“Perchatkin here is complaining that you have some terrible things here.  He calls them ‘jars’ but says they are more like coffins.  He says you confine prisoners in them.”
The KGB director became embarrassed and began making excuses. “Comrade reporters, it wasn’t our idea.  We didn’t invent them.  It’s all legal.  It was authorized by the Prosecutor General.”
“You mean you really do have these ‘jars’?”
“Yes.”
“You mean Perchatkin is telling the truth?”
“I don’t know what he’s been saying but we do have ‘jars’.”
The reporters were looking embarrassed.  Somewhat reluctantly, Novoselov asked, “And do you smear prisoners with chemicals?”  He could not bring himself to say ‘torture.’
“Yes, we smear prisoners with chemicals but that is also sanctioned by the Prosecutor General. We don’t do anything on our own accord.  It’s all legal.”
The reporters were silent.  They had not expected the answer.
“See, that’s the kind of ‘liar’ I am!  There’s more. Take a look at how they feed us.  The food they give us is a starvation diet.  You can try the slop yourselves. Step into any cell.  You can even follow me when they take me away.  You’ll see that every cell is a breeding ground for tuberculosis.  The cement wall and floors are always damp, cold.  The cells are too crowded.  You’ll see people sleeping on mattresses frozen to the floor.  It’s bad enough that conditions in the cells cause the prisoners to develop tuberculosis but even worse, the prisoners with tuberculosis are not isolated from the others.  They stay in the same cells with healthy prisoners.”
The reporters did not know how to respond to the situation.  There was a long pause.  Then Novoselov found a way out.  “Prison’s not a health resort. Maybe we should put a tropical plant and a color television in your cell too?” 

1980 was coming to an end.  In prison, the dubaks always tried to come up with some new kind of New Year’s entertainment for themselves.  Their entertainment was always designed to bully the prisoners.
On the 31st of December, the door of our cell opened.  A dubak walked in.  “Gentlemen criminals, I congratulate you with the advent of the New Year.  Grandfather Frost and the Little Snow Maiden are bringing you presents. Grandfather Frost and Little Snow Maiden, bring in the presents!
Two prison trustees entered the cell.  One of them had a cotton wool beard stuck onto his face and the other one wore a dress.  The ‘Little Snow Maiden’ spread chlorine around the cell and ‘Grandfather Frost’ poured out a bucketful of putrid liquid onto the floor. Several prisoners did not even have time to get their mattresses up from the floor. 	
Everyone had different reactions.  The prisoners who were serving their second terms were already accustomed to being mocked.  They began gathering up their mattresses silently.  The other prisoners began shouting indignantly and demanding to talk to the prison supervisor.
“What? Don’t you like the presents?” asked a dubak, laughing. “Grandfather Frost, give them some more.”
The trustee came back and poured another bucketful of liquid onto the floor.  The dubak laughed joyfully and slammed the door shut. We began cleaning up the cell. One prisoner, who was covered with tattoos, began shouting at the dubaks, “In the concentration camps, the fascists bullied the prisoners but they never bullied their own people.  You Communists torment your own people.  It’s a shame Hitler didn’t finish you off.  You can thank the Americans for that.”
There were fascist slogans tattooed all over his body.  He had the insignia of an SS officer tattooed on his shoulder and a swastika tattooed on his right hand covered his whole palm. “Heil Hitler,” he shouted again, raising the hand with the tattoo.  “We’re going to wish the dubaks a Happy New Year too.”
He began making calls on the ‘telephone’ using both the pipe and the cup. Requesting that his message be passed around, he asked all the prisoners to shout ‘Heil Hitler” after the evening inspection.
After the evening inspection of our cell, this prisoner immediately began shouting “Heil Hitler” but no one joined in except one drug addict.  Together, they shouted “Heil Hitler”.
Then a few cries of “Heil Hitler” began coming from other cells.  This was a timid beginning but then the prisoners began shouting more boldly. The juveniles were especially bold.
The dubaks began to panic.  They ran from cell to cell threatening the prisoners and then simply asking the prisoners to quiet down. If this had happened in just one cell, or even in ten cells, the dubaks would have quieted down the prisoners quickly with their dogs and clubs but the shouts were coming from hundreds of cells.  Brought to despair by the constant torment of the dubaks and by the unbearable conditions in the prison, the prisoners shouted “Hail Hitler” trying to revenge themselves on the dubaks and on the Communists.  Their protest did not pass without repercussions.
The next day, the prisoners from the cells, where there had been the most zealous shouting, were taken to the bathhouse.  Without trying to find out who had done the shouting and who had not, the dubaks smeared them with the chemical solution.  Without allowing them to wash it off, they made the prisoners get dressed and then led them back to their cells.  Instead of leading them through the prison passageways, the dubaks led them through the courtyard so that the whole prison could hear them screaming in pain.  We heard them screaming in the courtyard for an hour.
Everyone in the cells froze in expectation waiting for the door to open and to be taken out for torture with chemicals that could only be washed off in the cells.
That was the way the prisoners met the New Year in 1981. 

Chapter 23
The Syphilis Ward

The investigation of my case was completed.  Grey, monotonous, prison days stretched out before me with nothing to distinguish one from the other. Six days passed.  Then the cell door opened and a dubak walked in.  “Perchatkin, with your things!”
I had ten minutes to pack my things and was then led through the prison labyrinths.  They brought me to a large cell holding about thirty people.
A prisoner came up to me.  He was naked to the waist and the skin on his chest, stomach, and one of his arms was diseased.  It reminded me of fish scales. “I’m in charge of the cell,” he said.  “I have to find a place for you in the cell.  What are you here with?”
I did not understand his question.  “Are you asking what I’m in prison for?” I asked.
“I’m not interested in that.  I want to know what disease you have.”
“I don’t have any disease.”
“Don’t play stupid. Don’t you know this is the syphilis ward?  Headaches don’t get you in here.  We’re all piled together here in one heap, skin diseases and venereal diseases.  We try to divide ourselves into groups so that we don’t pass on infections to each other.  Your skin looks normal to me so you probably have syphilis.  Your place is over there.”  He pointed to the left corner of the cell.
 I was shocked silent.  I had expected all kinds of low down treatment from the KGB, but I had not expected this. 
“Why are you so quiet? asked the cell leader.
“I’m healthy.  I don’t have any skin diseases or any venereal diseases.  The KGB is investigating me.  They sent me here to break my will and to force me to confess.”
“What’s your last name?”
“Perchatkin.”
“Well, when they do the evening inspection, you’d better demand to be taken away from here.  Otherwise, you’ll catch an infection.”
Then he turned around and walked back to his bunk. I threw my rolled up mattress on the floor and sat down on it.  I had no doubt that the KGB had a hand in this but I did not know what they wanted.  Maybe the wanted to get me infected with some illness just by being in the cell. Of course, my file would not mention which cells I had been in. One thing was clear – I was not here by accident.  They wanted something to happen to me before my trial.
Unexpectedly, the name Geli Snegirev came to mind.  When I met him at the press conference, he was healthy.  His energy and health were more than apparent.  I had been shocked when I heard the news a year later that he had died in prison from cancer.  He had not made it to trial.  Everyone who knew Geli had no doubt that he had been injected with some disease that would get rid of such an ‘unpleasant’ writer.  Later, I had found out from his relatives that he had not admitted any guilt during investigation and had refused to implicate anyone else.  They had even brought him documents to sign when he was on his deathbed.
“The KGB wants to infect me with syphilis, “ I thought. “Maybe they will take a blood sample, infect me, and then use it to pressure me into confessing. ‘Plead guilty, write a confession, and we’ll cure you,’ they will say.  ‘If you don’t write a confession, we’ll disgrace you and let you rot.’” 
I sat in the stone cell, contaminated with all kinds of diseases. The cockroaches were crawling across the floor in front of me. I had endured hunger, torture with chemicals, unbearable sessions in the ‘jar’, and now this too!  I felt as if my physical strength were ebbing away and with it, my will to resist.  I caught myself thinking that if I were called to interrogation again, I would not be able to hold out.  Maybe Klimov had been right when he said the system would get me in the end.  Maybe I had done it all in vain. I had achieved nothing.  Nothing has changed and maybe things will get worse.
“My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?  I’m here by Your Will, so why are You giving me trials I can’t endure?  I’ll probably never get out of here?  What’s going to happen to my family?  Poor Zina! My poor children!  Oh Lord, please take care of my family.  Give me a chance to find out about them.”
The prayer calmed me.  I remembered a passage from the New Testament:  “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name, they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpent; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” (Mark 16:17-18).
An hour passed, the feeding trough opened, and a dubak shouted through it, “Perchatkin, to the door without your belongings!”  It had begun so quickly.  I walked out of the cell.
“Hands behind you!” commanded the dubak.  He handcuffed me. “We’ve been ordered to bring you in handcuffs.”
My feet would not obey me.  I walked down the corridor slowly as if to my own execution.  When we had walked about twenty yards, the dubak began whispering to me.  “My name is Igor.  My parents are Baptists.  I’m from Tashkent.  I’m a law student and have to do a two-year practicum in the Internal Affairs system. There are incredible rumors going around about you in the prison system.  They say you’re a spy but I’ve known since childhood that all Baptists are considered spies.  My grandfather was also tried as a spy.  I want to help you.”
“How can you help me?”
“I can visit your family on my day off and tell them anything you say.”
The thought occurred to me that the dubak might be an agent but I had nothing to lose.  “Okay, can you go to Nahodka tomorrow?”
“No, not tomorrow.  I have to work.” 
“I need you to do it right away.  Some other time might be too late.”
“If you really need it right away, I’ll take a taxi to Nahodka today and do whatever you say.”
“Remember, the address is Uritsky Lane, number 11, Pad Obnaya district.  The taxi drivers know where it is.  Tell my family that I’ve been tortured with chemicals three times and that I’m being held in the syphilis ward right now.  I don’t know where you are taking me now or what will happen but I’m sure they want to infect me with some kind of disease.”
Several minutes later, the dubak brought me into a room where there were two dubak-medics and a woman about thirty-five years of age.  The woman was wearing a white jacket over a military uniform. She looked at me indifferently and ordered, “Sit at the table.”  She pointed to a chair opposite her.
The two guards ‘helped’ me sit down by pushing firmly on my shoulders.  They removed the handcuff from my left hand and attached the loose cuff to the back leg of my chair.  As I sat there, the guards continued holding down my shoulders. I had never experienced so much terror in prison as I did then.  I felt a chill go through my body and my legs began trembling. No wonder, they were pinning me down by the shoulders.  They had prepared everything in advance, foreseen everything.  Now pretending to take a blood sample, they would inject syphilis into my system and keep me pinned down so I could offer no physical resistance.
“Oh, God, help me,” I prayed as I tried finding a more comfortable position and attempted to keep my emotions under control.  The strong hands of the guards held me into the same position.
“Citizen Perchatkin,” said the woman.  “You have an advanced case of syphilis.  You hid your illness but the blood test we took when you were admitted to the isolation ward confirms it.  I am amazed that your nose hasn’t collapsed yet.”
After a short pause, she ordered, “Put your left arm on the table and stretch it out. I’m going to take another sample.  We’re also going to have you sign a paper that acknowledges that we have informed you about your responsibility not to spread syphilis.”
While the dubaks were stretching out my arm on the table, the woman took a syringe from a cupboard.  The syringe was very thin, not the usual one for taking blood samples. I tried to remain calm and asked, “Just when did you find out that I had an advanced case of syphilis?”
“I already told you, when you were admitted to the isolation ward.”
“Do you even know when I was admitted to the isolation ward?  It’s obvious they didn’t let you know that I’ve been in prison for more than eight months.  I didn’t let them take a blood test.  You’d better tell the person, who gave you that syringe, that a syringe like that isn’t used for blood tests.  I promise you, I will find a way of informing the whole, free world about what’s going on here.  You’ll answer for infecting me with syphilis. Tell the KGB that I may rot here but I will never say what they want me to say and I will never confess.”
The woman put the syringe on the table.  ‘I don’t believe you.  I don’t believe your slander.  All I know is that you’re a dangerous criminal and a government prisoner.”
“You don’t have to believe me.  Check my file.  You don’t even have to bother with the file, check my medical record.  Everything is recorded there.”
The woman was silent for a long time.  Then she made a telephone call.  She asked what crime I was in prison for and whether I really had ties with the West.  When she received the information, she stood thinking for a while and then ordered the guard to leave the office.  “Don’t think I’m afraid of the KGB or of the West. I have simply discovered that there was an error.  Until I understand what’s going on, I’ve decided not to do a blood test.  You can sit in your cell.  I’ll prescribe a special diet but please sign the paper indicating that you’ve been warned about your responsibility not to spread syphilis.”
“I won’t sign anything.  I’ll go on a hunger strike rather than have a special diet. I demand I be returned to a regular cell.”
“Returning you to a regular cell is not in my power.  I’ll tell the KGB everything you told me.”

They brought me back to the syphilis ward. The next morning, Lt. Colonel Bykov summoned me to his office.  When I was brought to his office, he laughed heartily.  “Why are you refusing treatment, young man?  Threatening the doctor too? Scaring her with threats to expose her abroad?  Forget it! Your contacts are gone.  Your friends are keeping quiet as mice.  Forget it all and confess.  Nobody can help you here but us.”
“Well, you’ve as much as admitted that you sent me to the syphilis ward.  It was your doing.  I’m not confessing to anything.”
Bykov stood up from the table abruptly, walked up to me, and hissed ominously, “Don’t make us into animals, Boris.  We are human beings.  We have to get you to confess your guilt in court.  I have orders from Moscow. I have to carry out my orders. Do you understand?  Write a letter and plead guilty. I’ll put you back in a regular cell immediately.  The prosecutor will turn over your case for further investigation.  You can submit new evidence and you’ll go home immediately after the trial.  We have to disarm you, halfway at least.”
I looked through the window indifferently.  I could see a little patch of blue sky.  “I won’t sign anything.  I’m not guilty.”
“Well, then we’ll have to begin treatment.”

I was back in the syphilis ward where I never stopped praying, not for a moment.  I did not touch anything – neither food nor water. No one paid any attention to me in the cell. Of course, no one paid attention to anything there. I slept sitting on my mattress and leaning against the wall.  My sleep was short and troubled. I was constantly on the alert, knowing that the door could open at any time and that a dubak could shout “Perchatkin, to the door without your things!”
It happened two days later.  Two dubaks were waiting for me in the corridor. “Hands behind your back!” they ordered.  They handcuffed my hands.  I was so physically exhausted that I had become apathetic about what would happen to me.  Maybe the dubak Igor was a spy after all.  Maybe Bykov was telling the truth - that my contacts in the West had disappeared. I hoped only in God.  “Lord, I am in Your Hands.”
They brought me into the prison director’s office.  The director, Bykov, and the prison superintendent were there.  Bykov stood up from the table and started shouting at me. “You lowdown, stinking bastard! You animal!  When are you going to stop sucking our blood?  You slandered us again.  What chemical torture? What syphilis ward did we put you in?  You dirty scum! You’ll answer to me for this!  You’re going to interrogation immediately.  The prison administration is filing new charges against you for slander.  You’ll answer for opening your mouth about the ‘jars’, the chemical torture, and the syphilis ward.  Try proving it to the prosecutor!  I guarantee, you won’t prove a thing.”
I was filled with joy.  Zina had gotten the information to the West.  Igor had been an answer to my prayer.  The Lord had not forgotten me.  Now, there was nothing to fear.
I silently thanked God for the trials and tribulations He had sent me.  I thanked Him for His love, for His help, and for giving me strength to endure.  The Lord is with me and I can do all things in Him who strengthens me!
Bykov turned to the prison superintendent and screamed, “Find the stinking bastard he took for a ride.  They’ll be tried together.  What kind of dubaks do you have here?  Check everyone who’s had contact with him!”
“That’s hard to verify,” answered the superintendent timidly.  “We don’t keep records on who takes a prisoner where. We can only find out who was on duty in the corridor.”
“Find him! Find him!” shouted Bykov. “Do you understand what’s happened?  The whole world knows about your prison now.  Make a record of every dubak who goes near his cell.”
The prison superintendent ordered the prison director, who in turn ordered the bloc warden to personally keep tab on every guard who would be on duty in the corridor by my cell.  “Bloc warden and corridor guards,” taunted Bykov screaming, “you’re all blockhead dubaks! The prisoners sure gave you the right name. If the bloc warden and the guards had been in the corridor, this wouldn’t have happened.”

They put me in the ‘jar.’ I figured out later that they held me there more than twenty hours.  To me, it seemed like I stood in there for an eternity.   I lost all orientation to time.  I felt my legs swelling.  At first, the soles of my feet ached but later I could not feel them at all.  It felt like my legs had turned to lead.
Finally, the door opened.  I took a step out of the ‘jar’ and almost fell.  I could not feel my legs.  The dubak understood the results of such a long time in the ‘jar’ and gave me some kind of chair. Exhausted, I sat down and massaged my feet.
“Perchatkin, to interrogation!”  I looked up to see my familiar KGB escorts.  “Hands behind your back.  One step forward, one step back, I consider escape. I’ll shoot without warning!
I was back in the interrogator’s office again, where Lt. Colonel Bykov questioned me.  “I’ve been instructed to do a follow up investigation on your new case,” he told me.
He sat at his desk, propping up his head with his hands. “What do you think you’ve accomplished?  Do you have any idea what you look like.  When you first came in here, you were fresh and full of life but now, your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.  Why are you tormenting yourself, your family, and us, too?  Do you think it’s pleasant for me to question you when you’re in such bad condition?  You have to realize one thing:  you’re guilty. Now you have new charges hanging over your head.  Try proving to me that you were put in the syphilis ward.  Try proving they tried to infect you. What chemical torture? What ‘jars’?”
“I won’t prove anything to you.  I’ll prove it during the trial.”
“We’ll have a closed trial.”
“If you’re doing everything legally, why are you afraid of an open court?”
“Does this mean that you’re refusing to answer my questions?”
“I’ll tell you again.  I’ll talk about everything in court.”
“Don’t think I’m such a monster.  I’ve never investigated a case like yours before.  I’m used to questioning saboteurs, smugglers, and money speculators.  Their cases are straightforward but your case, I tell you openly, has put a heavy load on my soul.”
After questioning was over, I was put in a regular cell with fifty other people.   Since my name was already known in all the cells and since the whole prison knew the KGB was terrorizing me, they gave me a lower bunk.  I was so tired I could hardly stand on my legs.  I immediately lay down on the bunk and fell asleep in an instant.

Some kind of noise awakened me.  I opened my eyes and saw two prisoners standing in the middle of the cell.  They were dressed in skirts made from prison blankets.  On their heads were ‘tiaras’ made from magazine covers.  They were waving their handkerchiefs and singing loudly, “It’s no wonder that Russian beauty is so highly praised….”  Then four other prisoners jumped ‘on stage.’  They were dressed in undershirts and short skirts.  “Tchaikovsky. Swan Lake. The Dance of the Swans,” announced one of them. Taking each other by the hand, they began singing the melody, dancing, and swinging up their hairy, needle-marked legs.  The ‘swans’ jumped around for a while and then, apparently growing tired, they began walking around the cell flapping their hands like wings. I wondered if they had put me in a cell for crazies.
The prisoner on the bunk next to mine noticed that I had awakened and was watching what was going on in astonishment.  “The cocks are putting on a concert,” he explained laughing. The concert ended just before dinner.
As we were eating dinner, a prisoner came up to me, handed me an apple, and began telling me, “I was just transferred here from a general cell.  There was a Baptist there too, a young guy.  He has relatives overseas.  I think his uncle works at a radio station in America that broadcasts into the Soviet Union. His first name is Tolik but I don’t remember his last name.  The dubaks are giving him a terrible time.”
I knew he was talking about Tolik Kabinov.  His uncle, Eugene Bresenden, had served a three-year term in Soviet prisons.  He had been the first believer to immigrate to America in 1975.  From what the American diplomats had told me, I knew he was trying to help us from America.   The American congressmen and diplomats had also told me several times that our support in America was very weak. The only person seriously trying to help us was Eugene Bresenden.  He was knocking on every door.
The KGB had been looking for a way to stop Bresenden’s work.  Now, it seemed that they had found the way - by arresting his nephew.  Earlier, they had tried using traditional methods.  They had arranged to send a letter to civic and religious organizations in America.  The letter purported to be from a small group of Pentecostals in the Soviet Union who were seeking immigration to America.  Supposedly, several well-known people had signed it.  The letter stated that Bresenden was not trustworthy, that he was a liar, that he had been ex-communicated three times, that he represented no one, and that Pentecostals in the Soviet Union did not trust him. I had twice written letters contradicting those allegations.
I found out that Tolik was being held in cell 167, a cell we always passed on our way to exercise. During one of those walks, I seized the moment, ran up to the cell, opened the feeding trough, and shouted, “Tolik Kabinov!”  I saw him jump up and run to the door.  I did not have much time but I handed him an apple that I had hidden in my clothing earlier.  “Hang in there Tolik,” I shouted.
After that outing for exercise, I was sent to the ‘jar’ for my insolent behavior.        

Chapter 24
The Trial

A few more days went by and then one morning after inspection, a dubak came to the cell and announced: “Perchatkin, to the door, to your lawyer.”
They took me to the lawyers’ room.  My lawyer was waiting there.  “Hello,” he said.  “My name is Boris Antolevich Dogot.  I’m your lawyer.  I know that you don’t trust Soviet lawyers but here’s a letter from your wife.”
I read the letter. Zina wrote that she had had great difficulty finding a lawyer who would agree to take my case.  She warned me that I should not reject this one for any reason.
“Do you understand what you’re getting into?” I asked the lawyer. “If you defend me, it will end your career but if you are my lawyer in name only, why do I need you?”
“You’re right,” he replied, “but I’m not worried about my career.”
He stood up from the table, leaned on his cane, and showed me his right leg.  “Take a look at my artificial leg.  My right leg was amputated three years ago.  The doctors gave me a bad prognosis. Now they want to amputate my left leg.  I don’t have long to live. I was the director of the investigation department for fifteen years but I resigned. I saw everything possible there.  Now my conscience is bothering me.  I want to atone for my guilt, at least partially, by taking your case.  As I already told your wife, I will defend you honestly.  Please, believe me.”
I admit that I did not believe the lawyer but, in consideration for Zina, I did not refuse his services.
I met with the lawyer every day for a week.  On the second day, he wrote me a note on a piece of paper.  “Yesterday, after we got acquainted, the KGB called me and ordered me to come for a meeting.  They are requiring me to write an account of everything we discuss and want to know what defense we are going to use for each charge.  They may be bugging the room so you should write down whatever you don’t want the KGB to know.  In my report, I’ll only write about the matters we discuss aloud.”
We talked about the case and the lawyer began considering how to conduct the defense. “It’s like the Stalin era,” he wrote. “They’re accusing you for what you thought, for what you said, and for the people you were acquainted with.  I know that it will be difficult contending with the KGB because the KGB is always right.  The judges act according to KGB instructions.  All the same, we have to fight to expose them.  They have made a diligent search for people to testify against you. In addition, I have discovered that a few pages have been torn out of your file.  If I make any complaint, they will fire me and send in another lawyer. You are the one who should write a statement to the court explaining that you have discovered that there are missing pages.  Demand an explanation from the investigators and find out where the missing pages went.” 
I knew immediately why the pages had disappeared.  The KGB was afraid that the court might question me about the ‘jars,’ the chemical torture, and the syphilis ward.  The KGB was afraid I would talk about prison conditions so they dropped those charges from the case.
My lawyer outlined the situation saying,  “The KGB is basing its case against you on the ‘Voice of America’ and radio ‘Freedom’ broadcasts, as well as on several foreign publications.  What I need you to do is to write an official statement and submit it to the court. We can use your statement to play Soviet propaganda against the KGB.  We can drive them into a dead end. For the last seventy years, Soviet propaganda has told the Russian people that bourgeois propaganda is slanderous, taking news from the Soviet Union, reworking it, and broadcasting it to fit bourgeois interests. Soviet propaganda continuously admonishes us not to believe the ‘Voice of America’ or any other bourgeois mass propaganda but now the KGB is basing more that half of the charges against you on this ‘bourgeois propaganda.’  In your case, the KGB is assuming that ‘bourgeois propaganda’ is true and authoritative enough to support the charges against you.  That is a dead end for them.  When you write your statement to the court, be sure to ask the judge why the KGB believes bourgeois propaganda.  Ask him who is lying: Soviet propaganda or the KGB?   I’m glad you did not answer any of their questions because now they can’t use your own words as weapons against you.”
For the next week, I spent seven to eight hours a day conferring with the lawyer, studying the case, and preparing a defense. The trial was scheduled to begin on January 22 but, for some reason, it was set over to February 2nd and then to March 18th.  My lawyer sent me a letter in which he wrote: “Your case is being discussed at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Madrid.  The KGB does not know what to do with you.  If they give you the sentence they want, it will cause a scandal but if they let you off, it will disgrace them.  They are trying to decide what to do with you in Moscow right now.  Even Amnesty International is trying to send its lawyers to the trial. I don’t think the KGB will let you off but they won’t give you a long sentence.”
The trial began on March 18th.  Almost all the members of the Nahodka and Vladivostok Society of Pentecostals gathered at the Vladivostok Regional Court.  Television cameras focused on me.  The KGB was waiting for me to experience a moment of weakness so they could film me. That moment never arrived.
The trial continued for sixteen days and covered all the material the investigator had prepared against me – some seven volumes, about three hundred pages apiece. Fifty witnesses were summoned to court and questioned but only two of them testified against me.  The other witnesses merely verified that I had written the documents regarding the persecution of religious believers in the USSR.  They all testified that the documents I had sent abroad were not slanderous.  Anatoly Zherebelov, Viktor Babich, and Vladimir Stepanov gave especially brave answers in my defense and Viktor Babich testified so candidly that I was afraid he would be arrested right there in court for disseminating anti-Soviet propaganda.  
Judge Mihailovich used the same tactics as the interrogator Istomin.  Knowing that I was only able to eat a little ‘slop’ in the morning, he ordered me locked in a cell in the court basement during the lunch break. While he went out to eat lunch in a restaurant, my lawyer slipped me sandwiches in the cell. After three days, the guards in the basement corridor noticed the lawyer giving me food.  They informed the judge, who ordered them to take me back to the prison and lock me in the ‘jar.’ I stayed hungry.

The lawyer provided a sterling defense and turned the trial into an indictment of the Soviet justice system.   Everyone in the courtroom was sure I would be set free.  Only my lawyer doubted it.  “Since your case made it to trial, they will give you six months at the very least.  The KGB never admits being wrong.”
When the trial ended, I was taken back to my cell to await the verdict.  Four hours later, I was escorted back to court.
“Please stand. Court is in session,” announced the court clerk.  The courtroom hushed in anticipation and the judge began reading the verdict without looking up at anyone.
‘On behalf of the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republics, on this 3rd day of April, 1981, the Judicial Colleagues for Criminal Matters of the Primorsky Regional Court, including Judge Mihailyukova, presiding, Korol and Korobeeva, Associate National Judges, Belotserkovets, Secretary, in cooperation with State Prosecutor Lebedev and Attorney Dogot, have heard testimony in court proceedings for case number 2-3 of the accused, Boris Georgevich Perchatkin….”

No one stirred in the courtroom. I looked at Zina.  She was pale.  I knew she was still hoping that the judge would set me free but I knew the KGB.  Even when my lawyer had said that he thought I would get six months, he had been hoping for six months in a labor camp but I had no hope for such a light sentence. The KGB had used two statutes to accuse me.  I had not expected the lawyer to switch the case to statute 190 but now I was glad he had done so.  His maneuver had guaranteed that I would not get a seven-year prison term but only a possible maximum of three years, not the six month minimum the lawyer expected.

“The accused, Perchatkin, was one of the leaders of the Pentecostal sect in Nahodka, in the Primorsky Region.  Beginning in 1980, he became the secretary of the so-called Union of Evangelical Churches of Christian Pentecostals in the USSR.  Beginning in 1976, he began active participation in the recruitment for, and organization of, a mass exit of Pentecostals from the Soviet Union to Capitalist countries.  He traveled systematically from Nahodka to other parts of the country and met with other like-minded individuals and renegade dissidents, as well as with diplomats, journalists, and other representatives from Capitalist countries, to whom he transmitted both in oral and written form, biased and slanderous information about the situation of Pentecostals in the USSR. Both as an individual and in cooperation with other like-minded individuals, he prepared, signed, and distributed slanderous appeals, statements and letters to international organizations.  These appeals, statements, and letters discredited the Soviet government and threatened social order. Perchatkin is guilty of the following crimes: 

In 1976, the accused, Perchatkin, prepared and distributed an appeal to the World Council of Churches, the United Nations, and to the primary participants in the Helsinki Accord.  Signing the appeal in his own name and in the name of his family members, Perchatkin did slanderously assert that religious believers are subjected to ongoing persecution in the USSR…

In 1977, in the city of Nahodka, the accused, Perchatkin, prepared a statement, addressed to the so-called “Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights,” which informed them that beginning in 1975, he had become active in the defense of his fellow believers…

In March 1977, the accused, Perchatkin visited the like-minded dissident A.A. Polishuk in his apartment in Moscow.  This man emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1977.  Perchatkin read the text of an appeal addressed to “All Christians of the World.” He agreed with its contents and signed it… 

On September 10, 1977, the accused, Perchatkin, acting together with F.I. Patrushev of Nahodka and M.I. Piemenov of Vladivostok, sent a letter to the participants in the Belgrade Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe and to everyone who signed the Helsinki Accord…

On September 23 in Moscow, Perchatkin took part in a press conference for foreign journalists.  Acting together with dissident Stepanov, he provided information about the situation of religious believers…

In Spring 1978 in Moscow, the accused, Perchatkin, by signing his name to the document, gave his consent to the preparation and distribution of a slanderous appeal regarding the arrest of Yuri Orlov, a member of the so-called “Helsinki Watch Group.”  This appeal asked all people in the free world to participate in the defense of Yuri Orlov.  It asked for the defense of human rights - the right to free thought, speech, and information…

In December, 1978 in Moscow, the accused, Perchatkin, signed an appeal titled “Thirty Years of International Human Rights,” which falsely alleges that the USSR is violating many important articles specified in the International Declaration of Human Rights.  Those rights include the freedom to hold personal convictions, the freedom to receive and distribute information, freedom of religion, the right to freely choose one’s country of residence, freedom of movement within a country, the right to an open and just system of courts, and the right to free assembly.  This appeal slanderously asserted that religious believers of all faiths are being persecuted in our country, that political dissidents are being detained in psychiatric hospitals, that there is forced labor in prisons, and that there is discrimination against religious believers in education and employment…

On December 20, 1978, Perchatkin took part in the preparation of a telegram to the President of the USA, which approved the President’s efforts to defend human rights.  The telegram asked him and the American people to pray for people denied the freedom to practice their religion.  Perchatkin attempted to send this telegram through the Nahokda postal system…

At the end of 1979, Perchatkin prepared an “Appeal to the Congress and Government of the USA, and to Canada, Australia, England, Germany, France, and Italy.” This appeal contained especially slanderous statements about the Soviet system, which distorted the Communist Party’s position on religious affairs and Soviet laws regarding religious cults….” 

The judged listed all the documents, appeals and letters I had prepared and then continued by saying, “The accused has declared that he does not consider these documents. or any other documents he signed, to be slanderous.  Neither does he consider them distortions of Soviet reality.  He believes they reflect actual events and facts.  He does not consider himself guilty. 
	Having examined all the material and documents presented in this case, the judicial court finds the accused Perchatkin guilty of the crimes…
	On the basis of the foregoing material, the judicial colleagues find that Perchatkin’s activities have been correctly qualified according to Statute 190, Part I of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republics.
	Before sentencing Perchatkin, the court has taken into consideration the fact that Perchatkin has been carrying on his criminal activities for a long time in spite of repeated official warning to cease and desist his anti-Soviet activities.  In addition to considering Perchatkin’s specific crimes, his personal characteristics, and the fact that this is his first offense, the court has taken into account that Perchatkin has six dependent children. 

	In consideration of the above cited information, governed by Articles 301-302 and 312 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republics, the Criminal Court of the Primorsky Region finds Boris Georgevich Perchatkin guilty on all counts in accord with Article 190, Part I of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republics.  The Court sentences him to two years of imprisonment in a labor camp, ordinary regime.”

	No one was allowed to approach me, not even Zina. I was led from the courtroom. My friends threw me bouquets of flowers. As I walked, red tulips fell at my feet. I caught one of the bouquets, smelled it, and stretched out my arm to give it to Zina. She reached out her arm and I managed to touch her hand as she took the flowers.
	I submitted an appeal to the RSFSR Supreme Court but the verdict was upheld.  I spent another six months in the Vladivostok prison, each day expecting to be sent to a labor camp. 

Chapter 25
The Circles of Hell

	On October 8th, right after inspection, a dubak opened the feeding trough and shouted, “Perchatkin, with your belongings!”
	I gathered up my belongings and put them in a prison bag thinking, “Now I can finally get away from these prison walls. At least, in the labor camp, I’ll be able to breathe some fresh air.”
	“Before you hit the road,” said an old prisoner, “let’s sit down according to Russian custom.”  We all sat down.  We were all silent for a few minutes.
“God grant that they send you to the nearest camp, not far away,” said the old prisoner.  “Being transported to camp is the most terrible and dangerous period in a prisoner’s life.  During transport, the guards are not held responsible for anything, not even for loss of life.  All they have to do is get you to the next camp.  It doesn’t matter if they deliver you dead, alive or crippled.  The most important thing is just to get you there and hand you over.  If you want to stay alive, forget about your human dignity. This is what happens.  Sometimes, when the guards are marching the prisoners, they herd them into a muddy area and shout out an order to lie down! A few minutes later, the guards start firing sub-machine guns.  Anybody who tries to avoid getting dirty by remaining standing ends up falling down and never getting up again.  The guards don’t like proud prisoners.  They shoot them and write in the file, ‘Shot while trying to escape.’ They have the right to do this and nobody investigates.  Even if a hundred prisoners testify ‘Yes, it happened’ and one guard testifies ‘no it didn’t,’ the judge will believe the guard.  So be careful not to get shot on the way.”

A few minutes later, I was brought to a waiting cell, where there were already about twenty people.  The waiting cell was large but there were no bunk beds or benches in it. The prisoners called it the ‘standing room only’ cell.  Within the next hour, forty additional people were added to the cell. We stood waiting for a while. Then the feeding trough opened and a dubak announced, “Line up to get your rations for the trip!”
The prisoners arranged themselves in a line.  One by one, they went up to the feeding trough, gave their name, and received their rations – a half a loaf of bread, one four-ounce can of fish, and four ounces of sugar.
At midnight, the guards searched us and brought us to the prison courtyard, where the prison trucks the prisoners called ‘ravens’ were waiting for us. We were herded into the ‘ravens’ and crammed in so tight that it was impossible to move.  Once inside, we had to maintain whatever cramped position in which we found ourselves. It was easier for the shorter prisoners but, because I was tall, I had to stand with my head bent forward and to the side.
We were brought to the railroad station. When our ‘raven’ came to a stop, I could hear the barking of dogs.  A few minutes later, the door opened and we were hit by the blinding glare of searchlights. The head guard shouted orders.  “Line up in single file and run when I tell you to run.  Any other move is attempted escape.  We shoot without warning.  Okay, first man! Take off running and don’t stop!”
Then the dogs started barking more fiercely and we could hear the guards repeating, “First man, first man.”  The word reverberated like an echo as the other guards joined in the shouting. Thirty seconds later, we heard the head guard order “second man!” and the other guards echoing “second man, second man.”  The dogs again began barking fiercely. 
My turn came about ten minutes later. I stood waiting at the door of the ‘raven,’ with the glare of the searchlights hitting my eyes and the barrel of a semi-automatic thrust against my chest. “Twenty-third!” came the order.  The guard suddenly lifted the barrel of his semi-automatic from my chest and pointed it up into the air. Feverishly, I tried to figure out where I was supposed to run.  If I made a mistake and ran the wrong way, I would get a bullet in my back.
I jumped to the ground and saw soldiers with dogs to the right and to the left. Although the searchlights blinded my eyes so that I could hardly see where I was running, I ran between the line of guards. I had only one thought – to avoid tripping and falling.  As I ran by them, I could hear the guards chanting “twenty-third, twenty-third” but I kept my head down and saw only their boots and the gaping jaws of the dogs. After running about thirty feet, I almost fell as I approached a prison train.  The searchlights were not as strong here but, still blinded by the light, I could hardly make out the objects in front of me.
At the entrance of the train carriage, I hesitated.  The step was high and I tried finding it with my foot. As I raised my leg, looking for the step, the guard standing by the entrance hit me in the back with the butt of his rifle. He continued hitting me for several seconds until I found my footing.
Once inside the railway car, I did not know where to run. Standing directly in front of me was a soldier with a wooden club in his hands raised over his head, ready to strike. Quickly swerving to miss the blow, I ran further down the narrow aisle of the train, where three other soldiers were positioned about four meters apart from each other.  They had no rifles but they held wooden clubs.  As I ran by, attempting to avoid the clubs, they shouted “twenty-third, twenty-third” and tried landing blows on me.  At last, I saw a small compartment in the train where the metal grating was open.  I raced into it.
After me, one prisoner after another ran into the same compartment.  Although the compartment was the same size as a normal four-person train compartment, fifteen prisoners were crowded inside.  The first eight arrivals had found places to sit on the lower seats.  I was among the other prisoners, who had climbed onto the upper bunks but, with no place left, the last three prisoners to arrive had to sit on the floor.
The guards paid no attention to us.  They were busy filling the other compartments.  When all the prisoners to be transported had been crowded into the train, the guards escorted another prisoner down the corridor.  He did not have to run like the rest of us. He had a look of indifference and did not pay attention to anyone or anything.  He did not look to be any more than twenty-five years old.  Very pale, he was dressed in striped clothing.  “Death row inmate,” I concluded.  It turned out to be true.  He was on his way to Novosibirsk to be shot.
The prison train stood waiting on the siding for several hours and was connected to an engine just before dawn.  The train moved slowly along the Ussuriysk plateau, making many long stops at train stations along the way.  At one of these stations, more prisoners under transport were added to our train. These prisoners were women.
As the day ended, the prisoners in our compartment grew agitated and began cursing.  First one and then the other asked the guards for water or to be taken to the toilet.  The prisoners who really needed to use the toilet began swearing at the guards and calling them names but the guards walked around unperturbed and paid no attention. In time, the whole car began buzzing like a beehive and the prisoners began banging on the steel grating.  The head guard came running, exclaiming, “Calm down! Calm down.  You’re rattling your cages like animals. When you start behaving and quiet down like human beings, you’ll be taken to the toilet and given water, too.” 
One of the prisoners in our compartment could not stand it any longer.  “How can we keep quiet?” he shouted.  “I can’t stand it any more.  I’ll have to pee right here.”
The head guard was unperturbed.  “Go ahead,” he replied.  “You’re the one who has to smell it. Look at your fat faces.  You eat so much you can’t even squeeze through the grating and then you go plug up the toilets.”  He walked away.
About five minutes later, four guards arrived and began letting the prisoners out of the compartments to go to the toilet.  When our turn arrived, the guards opened the steel grated door.  “Single file! Face the wall! Now turn right! March!  You have thirty seconds to do your business!”
A guard stood at the bathroom entrance holding a wooden club and had a pistol on his belt. As everyone went to the toilet, he stood alongside watching.  “Hurry up! Hurry up,” he demanded. Then we were given water.
We traveled like this for three days until we reached Khabarovsk.  Arriving at night, we again faced the blinding searchlights, the narrow row of guards and dogs, and finally the prison.

Every prison has its own character. The Vladivostok prison is characterized by its ‘jars’ and chemical torture but the Khabarovsk prison is notorious for its filth and terrible sanitary conditions.  In the Vladivostok prison, a few cells were infested with bugs but the rest of the cells were relatively bug-free. The Khabarovsk prison was overrun with bugs.  I spent several days there not knowing that I would return there two years later.
A few days later, we moved on.  There were very few prisoners remaining from the group I started with from Vladivostok. Most of them had stayed at the Khabarov prison, to be later transported to labor camps in the Khabarov region. I was sent farther on but no one could tell me how long and how far my journey would be. It was the same routine - black, sour, dry bread, a can of fish, two teaspoons of sugar per day, and a desperate desire to have something to eat. The constant, gnawing hunger produced a terrifying fatigue and the journey seemed endless.

Chapter 26
The Irkutsk Prison

Four days later, again at night, we arrived at the Irkutsk Prison.  We were led through underground passageways to a large, underground room.  Fifteen soldiers with semi-automatics stood along the walls.  Some of the soldiers had dogs.  We were lined up.  We were all terribly exhausted.  In the first row, on the left, were several women, one of them with a nursing baby.  Surrounded by soldiers, we stood there for more than an hour until, finally, a major appeared accompanied by the prison supervisor. The major carried a rubber club over his shoulder.  He was noticeably drunk.
“You’ve landed at the Irkutsk Prison,” the drunken major informed us.  “This place wasn’t made just for you.  Our prison has a well-known history.  General Kolchak was imprisoned here in cell number 117.  He was executed here, too.  I’m here to warn you that if you break the prison rules, if you disobey the administration, the first thing that will happen is this…” He raised his club, took a step forward, and delivered a blow to someone in the first row.  The prisoner fell on the concrete floor without a sound.
“The second thing that will happen is this….” He took out a balloon filled with gas and shook it in the faces of the prisoners standing in the first row.  “And third….”  He pointed at the dubaks standing at the entrance and at the two huge dogs they held on leashes. “Well, now that we’ve gotten acquainted, let’s get down to business. I’m going to check your documents, then you go to the showers and then to your cells.  Are there any questions?”
The woman with the baby asked permission to ask a question.
“I give you permission.  Go ahead and ask.”
“I’m nursing a baby but, during transport, they only gave me one loaf of bread, some fish, and ten grams of sugar per day.  It’s not enough to feed my baby.  Please give me some milk.  I know nursing mothers are allowed to have milk.  One more transport like the last one and I’ll lose my baby.”
“Listen, lady, nobody invited you here.  When you’re planning on having a baby, you shouldn’t commit crimes. Did you think giving birth to a baby would keep us from putting you in prison?  That didn’t scare us.  We Communists are strong people.”
The baby made little cries.  Its diaper was long unwashed, filthy.  The woman pressed her precious bundle to her face and sobbed.
“She’s not a criminal,” remarked one of the other women.  “She just went to another town to be with her mother when she gave birth.  She was arrested for leaving her job and travelling without official permission.  Give her some milk.  The child is innocent.”
“It’s her own fault.”
The prisoners began murmuring.  Then some of the prisoners in the back row began shouting insults at Communists and even threatened to get even with the major when they were released.  The major gave a command and the soldiers pointed the barrels of their semi-automatics at the prisoners.  They began taking the muzzles off the dogs. Opposite the young woman with the baby stood a young soldier, his semi-automatic dangling from his shoulder.  He was wiping tears from his eyes.  It all seemed so incongruous. Even the young soldier seemed out of place in the hellish surroundings.
The major suddenly disappeared and was replaced by dubaks with clubs.  Silently, without expressing any emotion, like shepherds herding a flock, they used their clubs to drive us to the underground showers.
“They used to use this room for executions,” remarked one of the prisoners.
The shower room was not bad.  It was a big room with many showers and the water was sufficiently warm.  I stood under the shower and tried not to think about the woman and her baby but I kept seeing Zina and our newborn daughter.
I had been standing in the shower about ten minutes when I began feeling dizzy and nauseated. My vision grew foggy and I slowly began sinking to the floor.  Then everything grew dark. I was still conscious but I wondered why the lights had been turned off.
“Somebody’s sick,” cried a man standing near me.  “Turn on the cold water”
When I came to, I was lying under a stream of cold water. An exceedingly thin man was leaning over me. Although he was an inmate in a Soviet prison in the year 1981, he looked like prisoners I had seen in documentaries about Nazi death camps.  I was thin too but compared to him, I was an athlete.
“Well, brother,” he said.  “You’ve been spending a lot of time in cells and now you’re in transport.  You’re in no condition to bathe in hot water and to stand in a shower for a long time. You can wash up a little now but then sit and rest a while.  Can you stand up now?”
I was able to stand up.  He invited me to sit on a concrete slab. He began telling me about himself.  “I’ve been in prison five years but I haven’t had a trial yet.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m a geologist. I found a large diamond in Yakutia and I began wondering why it should belong to the Communists.  I decided to sell it but it was too large.  It’s impossible to find a buyer for such large diamond in the Soviet Union so I cut it into four pieces.  I hid three pieces in different places, tried to sell the fourth piece but I ran into a gem specialist.  He recognized that the diamond had been cut.  He began blackmailing me to sell it to him at a low price but I refused.  He turned me in right away.  This is the fifth year they’ve been dragging me around trying to get me to tell them where I hid the other pieces and where I found the diamond in the first place.  You know, I’m angry!  The longer I sit here and the more I shrivel up, the more determined I am not to tell them anything.  Those fools don’t understand this.  They’re going to send me to Yakutia or to Moscow.  Let them go ahead and send me.  I won’t tell them a thing.
After the showers, the guards started issuing mattresses. For some reason, they gave mattresses to some prisoners but not to others.  They did not give one to me but they did give one to my new acquaintance.  As he took his mattress, he explained “If they don’t give you a mattress, they won’t keep you here long.” 
Just when I began noticing that it was hard for him to carry the mattress, he asked me, “Brother, can you help me with the mattress?  I don’t have the strength to carry it.”
I had heard that people in prisons got to the stage that they could not carry their own mattresses, let alone their own bodies, but I had not believed the rumor.  Now I was seeing it with my own eyes.  I helped him.

I ended up in cell number 35.  It had a very high ceiling but was narrow like a corridor. Two-tiered bunk beds extended from one end of the room to the other. Just below the ceiling was a small, grated window, closed as usual with iron shutters. The window was so high on the wall that it was difficult to reach it even by standing on the top bunk.  It was a strange construction. 
When morning dawned, I was so deathly tired I could no longer stand on my feet. I wanted to lie down on the lower bunk but there was no mattress there.  “Take an upper bunk,” someone advised me.  “There’s light up there and the bed bugs don’t bite so much.”  I did what I was told and was asleep within a few minutes. 
The other prisoners woke me up for lunch. I was amazed.  The slop was edible.  Someone coming from freedom might think the soup was disgusting but I had almost forgotten the taste of real soup. “I can’t eat such good slop fast,” I told myself. “That would be a crime!” I took little mouthfuls and did not hurry swallowing.
After lunch, I got acquainted with the other prisoners.  I noticed one prisoner, who did not interact with the other prisoners at all.  There was something very strange about him. The expression on his face never changed and showed no emotion. Four fingers were missing from his right hand and the one remaining finger was bent.  He seemed to be about thirty years old. I watched him as he sat on his haunches and boiled tea without hiding what he was doing. Somehow sensing that I was watching him, he turned to me and said, “You want to talk? Come over here.”
His look and his voice had a compelling quality that demanded attention.  I walked over and sat down by him.
“Where did you come from?” he asked. 
“From Vladivostok prison.”
“What’s your name?”
“Boris.”
“Is your last name Perchatkin?”
“Yes.  How did you know that?”
“I’m from Vladivostok prison too. There were rumors about you going around all the houses there.  I can tell that it’s you by looking at you.  An inner voice tells me it’s you.  Tell me something about your faith.”
I told him a little about Christianity and the works of the Holy Spirit.  As I was talking, I realized that something bad was going on within this person.  After I finished talking, he looked at me and his gray eyes changed to brown and then to black.  Some kind of satanic glint roamed in them.
“I want to tell you my history,” he told me.  “Maybe you can help.”
Suddenly, he turned around.  A prisoner with an Asiatic appearance was standing behind us.  When he looked into the man’s eyes, the Asian seemed to be struck by an electric current.  He turned around and made a flying leap onto the upper bunk.  Not a word had been spoken.
“Well,” he said turning to me again.  “I’m a Satanist.”
“Then how did you end up here, especially when the whole system is satanic and you serve the system?”
“That’s a different question.  I want to talk about something else.  This is what happened.  Six years ago, I used to spend my time stunning fish with explosives.  You know, you throw dynamite in the water, it explodes, and all the fish float belly up from the hydraulic shock.  I messed up somehow.  The explosives went off in my hands.  See! My fingers were torn off but the main charge hit my stomach.  I woke up in a hospital, in the terminal ward.  I was just conscious enough to understand I was in a real mess. I began to pray.  My mother was an Adventist.  When we were children, she used to read us the Bible.  My father really beat her for that. So, anyway, I went on praying.  Then I’d lose consciousness, wake up, and pray again. I got worse and worse. I didn’t want to die but God didn’t come to help me. I despaired and began praying to Satan saying, ‘If you really exist, help me.’  As soon as I said that, I got a shot of morphine. The pain disappeared and I fell asleep.  When I woke up, it was night.  A little while later, the door opened and a doctor walked in. He was short, lean.  His face was thin, ascetic. His hair was short, like a little hedgehog ‘Why isn’t he wearing a white coat?’ I wondered.  He walked up to me.  His eyes were dark, insolent.  ‘You called me,’ he said, ‘so I came.’
I didn’t understand what he was talking about. Whom did I call?  Who came? He read my thoughts and explained.  ‘I am the one you called.  I came to help you’
‘Can this man be Satan?’ I wondered as I broke into a cold sweat.  ‘Where are his horns, his tail?’ 
 He read my thoughts again and replied, ‘Oh, that was a long time ago.  It’s not necessary now.  If we can reach an agreement now, I will help you.  God won’t help you anyway.  He’s always too busy but I always have time.’
I felt a chill. ‘What do you want in return?’ I asked.
‘Very little. From time to time, you will carry out my orders.  Your life will be happy, interesting. Don’t worry about a thing.  You will live out your life and then be with me.  Everything is not as bad as your mother taught you when you were a child.’
I felt an inner resistance and refused to bargain with him.
‘Well, whatever you want,’ he said. ‘If you need me, I’m always ready to help.  Remember that.’
He left and I grew worse.  I prayed again but received no help.  Toward morning, I felt like I was dying. I couldn’t stand it so I called Satan again just for a little relief.  It was a repeat of the first time. He appeared at night again.  I decided to trick him and began bargaining with him.  I tried to make a bargain that would save my soul. He agreed, saying, “Well, okay, your left hand isn’t damaged.  It will be mine.”  That was the bargain.
‘I’ll find you when I need to,’ he said leaving.
I began getting better fast.  Some time later, without really noticing it, I got acquainted with some drug dealers.  A voice inside me whispered, “This is just what you need.  It will make your life easy.”
I began dealing drugs.  What a life it was – a sea of money, endless possibilities, every kind of success – but, from time to time, I felt uneasy. I remembered my mother and decided to find some believers.  
I went to an Adventist service.  I had just begun praying, when I started feeling like someone was choking me. I ran out of the church.  The feeling passed immediately and I started breathing normally.  Well, I decided to try it again but the same thing happened.  I never went there again.
He came to me at night.  Some kind of a fiery ball came flying through the window and approached me.  It got bigger and bigger.  His face appeared in the fiery ball. I was scared but he told me, ‘Don’t be afraid.  We have power and authority over many things.  You will have different work now.  You are numbered among the ill-fated.  I’m sending you to fulfill your destiny.’
There was another flash.  The ball exploded and disappeared.  Now I’m here in prison. I know I was sent here for some reason but I don’t know what it is. I’m still resisting something.  What can you tell me.  Why didn’t God help me?  What can I do now?  I feel like I’m caught in a whirlwind.’
“Of course, I don’t know anything about your life,” I replied.  “Maybe you laughed at your mother, blasphemed the Bible, cursed God like you father, and lived closer to Satan than to God.  You approached Satan long before you asked him for help.  You only turned to God when you needed help from anyone.  You should have repented first and then asked God for help.”
“Yeah, it was just like you say.”
“Now,” I continued, “he sent you here to isolate you from believers and to keep you from going to church.  He will force you to commit some crime here.  Then the prisoners will kill you or you will be shot.  There’s only one way out for you.  Renounce him, repent before God, and then ask God to help you.  It will be very hard because Satan won’t let go of you easily but I’m sure God will hear you and help you.” 
That evening, the feeding trough opened and a dubak shouted, ‘Perchatkin, with your belongings!”
I was led to the ‘transit’ room where I spent the whole night.  It was very crowded there.  All night, they kept bringing in people or taking them away. Everyone was chain-smoking and we had to stand up because there was no place to sit down. The transit rooms are not called ‘standing rooms’ accidentally.  Everyone stands up and hardly anyone talks.  Everyone is thinking about himself, about his own problems.  All the people know that fate will soon scatter them to different prisons and labor camps.   

Chapter 27
The Journey to the Urals

In the morning I was taken from the transit room and put in solitary confinement.  There were no bunk beds or benches in this room.  After standing all night, I had no strength left.  I lay down on the cement floor and immediately fell asleep.  How long I slept is difficult to say because there were no windows in the cell and I could not tell the difference between night and day.  I hoped they might bring me some slop but no one came.  I sat there a long time.  Finally, the door opened.
“What are you doing here? How did you get here?” asked the dubak surprised.
“I’m the one who should be asking you why they brought me here and why they don’t feed me.  I didn’t get here by myself.”
“Come on out,” said the dubak.  He took me to another cell.
	It was a regular cell – filthy, stinking, full of fleas and bed bugs.  That night, we were all awakened by some kind of ruckus in the corridor and by a dubak shouting “Run! Run!”  We could hear the tramping sound of many feet and the sounds of clubs hitting human bodies. Then the tramping sound grew more distant and stopped.  We could hear an old man wheezing and remarking, “Look at him.  He’s covered with blood but he still doesn’t run.  Give him some more.”
	We heard them delivering the blows again.  When someone refused to run or to cry out, the dubaks became enraged.  Then everything grew quiet.  Ten minutes later, we again heard the tramping sound of running feet, the blows from the clubs, and the offended voice of the old guard crying, “Look at  him!   What a brute!  He’s too proud to run.  He belongs in the cemetery.”
	The other prisoners told me that this sort of thing happens regularly, especially at night. The dubaks rush into the cells and drive the sleepy prisoners out into the corridors, where other dubaks with clubs are standing along the walls. The prisoners are forced to run between the dubaks, who strike them with their clubs.  The faster you run, the less blows you receive.  This is the way the dubaks amuse themselves.  They beat prisoners for no reason and drunkenness among the dubaks is a normal occurrence.
I spent eight days in this cell but on the ninth day, I was back in transport.  This time, the guards were mostly uneducated, oppressed Muslims who hardly understood a word of Russian. They had obviously been conscripted from some remote villages.  Here they had the opportunity to feel superior to Russians even if those Russians were only prisoners.
I ran through the row of Muslim guards, who kicked me and hit me with the butts of their semi-automatics.  The guards barked orders in their own language and I did not understand what they wanted. Everything became confused – the blinding light of the searchlights, the barking of the dogs, and the blows from the guards, the incomprehensible orders, curses in the Russian language. Confused, not knowing if I was running in the right direction, I stopped running. I was immediately hit by a boot kick to my stomach.  I lost my balance and fell down, barely missing the fangs of the dogs.  I got up immediately, ran a few steps more, and stumbled up to the railroad car.  I grabbed hold of the handrails and with difficulty climbed into the car, where more guards were waiting for me. Without saying a word, they began hitting me with sharp, precise blows to my kidneys, liver, and heart – blows a weakened prison cannot avoid.  They grabbed hold of my clothing, held me in place, and beat me some more.  Finally, I ended up in a compartment.

Five days later, we arrived in Novosibirsk but I was not kept there long. I was put in the ‘transit’ cell again.  I stood in the ‘standing room’ for twenty-four hours and then was put back into transport.  It all seemed endless but I was able to calculate the number of days we would be travelling by the amount of food we were issued - two loaves of bread, eight teaspoons of sugar, and two yellow herring, covered with a layer of salt.  Since leaving the Vladivostok prison, we had not been issued any canned fish but only this extremely salty herring.  We threw it away immediately because it made us so thirsty and we were not given water.  Our ration was one cup of water a day. Since there was enough food for four days, it meant we would be en route four days.
  We spent the four days sitting.  It was forbidden to stand up in the compartment.  We also had to sleep sitting up.  I was exhausted and begged God to make this my last transport.
This time the transport turned out to be a good one.  The guards did not shout, call us names, or beat us.  They only prodded us on, saying. “Faster, men, faster.”  The guards even helped some of the elderly and weak climb into the train.
As usual, the compartment was crowded but the guards hung containers of water on the grating of each compartment and kept them filled up. This time, there was no problem with water.  The guards even allowed us to take turns standing up and moving around.  Whenever the head guard came for an inspection, the guards warned us beforehand and we sat down.  Everyone was amazed the guards were so good.  One of the prisoners grew daring and asked permission to smoke. The guard passed him a cigarette through the grating. When the other prisoners began asking too, the guard tossed his own package of cigarettes into the compartment.
“Where are you guards from?” asked one of the prisoners.
“From Siberia,” answered the guard.
“Where are you from?” the prisoner asked again.
“From Kemerovo.”
The prisoner continued talking to the guard, saying, “We had Asiatic-Muslim guards before we got you.  They were fierce people, who beat prisoners for fun.”
“We know!” answered the guard. “We live in the same barracks and we fight with them.  When we are assigned to work together, the Asiatic guards get real docile, ready to lick our boots.  We beat them like animals and try to convince them they may be guards today but tomorrow they might be the ones behind bars.  Guards are not usually recruited from Siberia unless there is a shortage. We ended up here because of a shortage. Convoy guards are usually recruited from among the Asiatic and Russian guards are only taken from the Volgograd region.”
The guard sighed and added, “We don’t get to choose where we serve. We are conscripted into the army and serve two years wherever they send us.  As you know, it means prison if we refuse.
We traveled like this for two days.  Then someone asked, “Where are we?”
“In the Urals,”* answered the guard.
The mention of the Urals brought back a wave of memories.  I had spent almost all of my childhood in the Urals.  Long ago, when I was thirteen years old, I had made a similar journey but I had traveled in the opposite direction, from the Urals to the Far East and not from the Far East to the Urals as we were travelling now.  Remembering my trip, I very much wanted to look out the train window but there was no window in the compartment.  The only window was in the corridor, where the guards were standing.  I looked at the window through the grating but I could not see anything.
As the wheels of the train click-clacked monotonously, I remembered more and more.  I remembered my childhood.

Chapter 28
Memories of Childhood

I grew up without a father.  My father was a military pilot, who died in an airplane accident when I was eight months old.  When I was three years old, my mother remarried, again a military man.  He was the captain of a tank brigade. My mother’s oldest brother commanded a tank division and my stepfather commanded one of the brigades in his division. I did not know then that Georgi Mikhailovich Perchatkin was not my natural father. I never felt like a stepson.  We lived in the Urals then, in the city of Beloretsk.
My father was sent to Germany in 1953.  There was an uprising in East Germany then. At the end of that year, my father was arrested. He was accused of disobeying orders and having ties with rebellious Germans. He was sentenced to execution by shooting but his sentence was commuted to twenty-five years of imprisonment.  He was sent to the North, to the Vorkuta labor camps.  We never saw him again.  
The city of Beloretsk was located on the banks of the Beli River.  There was a prison on the other side of the river.  When I found out that my father had been arrested, I began hanging around the prison gates hoping to see my father.  At the time, I thought there was only one prison and that I would be sure to see my father there.  There were long columns of prisoners doing forced labor in the quarry there.  I would walk behind a column and stare at the prisoners’ faces, hoping to see my father.  The guards would chase me away, but I persisted in going there until the day my mother received the first letter from my father.  It was only then that I realized there were many prisons and that my father was in Vorkuta.  “Why did he have to go to Germany?” I wondered.  “Why the Germans?”  Before my father was arrested, we had lived well but now the boys in my apartment courtyard were calling us spies.  They said my father was a spy because they had heard it from their parents.
There were many military families living in our apartment house. One of our neighbors, who lived on the same floor we did, was an investigator for the KGB.  It was called the NKVD then. Everyone in the apartment house was afraid of him.  A year earlier, he had overheard another neighbor, a school principal who lived on the same floor, listening to the ‘Voice of America’ during the night.  The KGB investigator wrote a letter of denunciation to the prosecutor and then conducted the investigation himself.  Those were the Stalin times, when people were arrested for that.  
The KGB investigator had a son.  I had been friends with him but after my father was arrested, he was the first one to call me a spy. I developed a hatred for the KGB in childhood.
My mother raised us three children on her own. She had to go to work and got a job as a laboratory assistant at the metallurgical factory.  Then my grandmother came to Beloretsk to help my mother take care of us. My grandmother was a believer and raised us in Christianity. We loved our grandmother very much.  In 1958, she had to return to Sergeevka, a village in the Far East to care for her ninety-year old mother.
 A year later, I found out that my great-grandmother had died. I decided to go and see my grandmother in the Far East.  I was thirteen years old at the time. When my mother went to work, I wrote her a note telling her not to worry but that I was going to travel to grandmother and bring her back with me.  I was a very reckless kid. I loved to read and once read a story about homeless people who traveled all over Russia on train roofs.  “Why can’t I do that?” I wondered. Knowing that my mother would never allow me to go, I did not ask her for money. I decided to travel like the homeless people did.
I took a package of cookies with me and set out on my journey.  At first, I rode on a freight train loaded with logs.  I climbed up on the logs and sat there for twenty-four hours.  Without even noticing it, I ate all the cookies during that time.  Then I changed to another train carrying coal.  I rode on the brake platform and soon realized I could not hold out there long.  The coal dust kept blowing on me, and besides, I was hungry. Most important, I had no idea where I was going.  I knew that I needed to travel towards Vladivostok so I got off at some station.  Nearby was a little river, where I bathed, washed my clothing, and began thinking about something to eat.  I knew from reading the books that homeless people stole food but I did not know how to steal and I did not want to.  I got the idea of gathering up bottles and cashing them in.  I walked around the station for a long time but it was such a small station, I could not find many bottles.  I managed to find a few bottles and cashed them in for money.  It was only enough for one loaf of bread.
After I ate, I felt stronger and decided to find out where I was and how far I still had to go to reach Vladivostok.  I saw a railroad worker, went up to him, and asked, “Please, tell me, how far is Vladivostock from here.”  My question made him angry.  He thought I was joking, growled something at me, and began swearing.
Then I walked into the train station and stood studying the map. I suddenly heard an announcement: “Comrade passengers!  The ‘Kharkov-Vladivostok’ train is arriving on platform one.”
When the train stopped, I waited until no one was looking, crawled under the train, and got to the other side, where there were no conductors.  I climbed onto the place where the train cars were connected and saw a ladder up to the roof.  When the train began moving, I climbed up to the roof of the train, found a comfortable protuberance there, and sat down on it as if on a chair. I looked ahead and three cars down, I saw someone’s back.  “He’e probably someone like me, “ I thought.  “I’ll move up there at the next stop.”  A few hours later, that is exactly what I did.
  A boy, a little older than myself, greeted me joyfully.  “My name is Voldyr,” he said.  “What’s yours?”
“Boris,” I replied.
“What else?” asked my new acquaintance surprised.
“What do you mean ‘what else’?”
“My name was ‘Volodka’ but now I’m ‘Voldyr. Don’t you have any other name?”
“No.”
“How can that be?  You don’t have a proper name. If the police catch you, they will ask you who you are.  You will say ‘Boris’ and tell them your last name.  They will find out where you came from right away.  I’ll tell them ‘Voldyr’ and let them keep searching. I’m the only one who knows where Voldyr lived.  I’ve been on the move like this for a year already.”
“Where did you live?”
“In Fergana.  When my mother died, my aunt took me to her village nearby. I got tired of working in her vegetable garden and watering it.  I poked holes in all her buckets and ran away.  Now I’m on the move and seeing the whole world.  In winter, I’m in Central Asia.  It’s warm there.  In summer, I go wherever I want.  You want to chow down?”
He took out a turnover and offered it to me.
“Yes.  I’ve only had a small loaf of bread to eat today.”
“Boy! That’s stupid.  There’s so much food around and you’re hungry.” We ate the turnover. 
“How long have you been traveling?” 
“This is the third day.”
“I’ll teach you how to get food.”
At the next station, he told me, “Okay, let’s go stock up on food.  You be the lookout and I’ll get the food.  Then we’ll grab the next train.”
“”No.  I’m in a hurry.  I have to get to Vladivostok fast.  I’m on my way to my grandmother.”
“Well, look, I don’t want to travel hungry.  I have to get some clothes too.”
“Where do you get clothes?”
“Boy, how stupid!” smirked Voldyr. “There are clothes in every yard.  The wash is hanging out to dry.  You just go and get whatever you need.”  Well, okay.  I’ll be seeing you.  Be sure not to sleep on the roof of the train or you’ll roll off.  Go into the train at night and climb up into the third bunk.  The conductors don’t come around at night.”
I did what he said.  At night, I went into the train, climbed into the third bunk, and fell asleep.  When I woke up in the morning, I saw that there were mostly soldiers in the car.  Through the window, I saw it was raining so I stayed in the third bunk.  I only climbed down to go to the toilet.  On the third day, I heard a soldier saying, “Hey, there’s a kid lying up on the third bunk.  I haven’t seen him eating anything.”  
The soldier called to me, “Hey kid, you alive up there?”
I looked down.
“Where are you going to?” asked the soldier.
“Vladivostok.”
“Why aren’t you eating something/”
“I don’t want to.”
“Oh sure! You don’t want to eat because you don’t have any money.  Climb down and come eat with us in the dining car.” I immediately climbed down from the third bunk.
In the dining car, the soldiers ordered dinner and beer.  “Do you drink beer?” asked one of the soldiers.
“Of course, I do.”
“Good man,” said the soldier pouring me a glass of beer.  I took a few swallows.  I did not like the beer.
“Is there any sugar?”
The soldiers laughed. “Okay, kid, leave the beer alone.  It’s better to eat.  Then we’ll buy you some candy.”
I traveled with the soldiers almost all the way to Vladivostok.  The soldiers gave me some money and helped me transfer to another train, which went to Sergeevka.  I made it to grandmother’s.

Chapter 29
Sverdlovsk Labor Camp # 10

Our prison convoy arrived at Sverdlovsk after five days en route.  We were led out of the railway cars at dawn.  Soldiers and dogs surrounded us.  Everyone was ordered to sit down on the ground, which was already covered with snow.  It was November, already winter in Sverdlovsk.  Everyone sat down on the snow.
“Perchatkin!” shouted the head guard.
I stood up.  They put handcuffs on me and two soldiers brought me to the ‘raven,’ which was standing about a hundred feet away.  An hour later, I arrived in Sverdlovsk Labor Camp #10, which was located in both the city and the administrative region governed by the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee’s First Secretary, Boris Yeltsin, the man who later became the President of Russia.
I did not see what the camp looked like from the outside.  After they took me out of the prison truck, they led me through rows of barbed wire, which was either stretched out or piled all around in coils. Wherever I looked, all I could see was the labyrinth of barbed wire through which I passed or the high, spiked, wooden fence, which was strung with barbed wire neatly coiled like a snake. Above the fence and its snake of barbed wire hung two, thin, deadly, high voltage, electric wires.  A strip of ploughed ground, a no-man’s land thirty feet wide, separated the labyrinth of barbed wire from the fence.  It was enclosed on both sides with a straight line of wooden posts strung with tangles of barbed wire. If someone ends up there, he will never get free.  The more a man struggles to free himself, the faster he is held and the more entangled he becomes.
The guards led me through the barbed wire labyrinth to a guardhouse.  I found out later that the guardhouse had a door directly onto the street but convoys of prisoners never passed that way.  They were taken through the gates of the camp so they could see what they were facing from the very first moment. Only commission members, prosecutors, dubaks, and prisoners being released were allowed to use the guardhouse’s street door.
In the guardhouse, the guards removed my handcuffs.  “Last name? Charges? Beginning of term? End of term?” they asked me.  I answered briefly.  That was all that was needed to become a slave in Sverdlosk Prison Camp #10.
As I was led further down the corridor of the guardhouse, I could hear electric locks clicking behind me.  It gave me a feeling of being completely shacked.  Then we exited the guardhouse and approached the labor camp area.  I could see the Camp headquarters to my right.  It was a neatly built, three-story, brick building, which housed the camp administration.  Behind it stood another brick building – the prisoner barracks.  To my left was the work area.
The guards led me across a wide square, where guards were carrying on inspections.  We came to a small group of prisoners, hitched like horses to a wagon loaded with building material.  By all appearances, it was a very proper horse and buggy with even a smartly dressed coachman walking alongside.  The ‘coachman’ was a prisoner but he was wearing polished boots and carrying a stick in his hand.   As I walked by, I could hear the driver cursing the harnessed prisoners for pulling the load too slowly. He was beating them on the back with his stick.
I found out later that this was Kymyshev, the prison camp’s lead trustee.  Highly trusted by the administration, he was allowed to do whatever he wanted.  Often drunk, he walked around the camp beating any prisoner, who did not get out of his way fast enough.  If, God forbid, someone refused to work in his presence, he would simply knock out the man’s teeth.  My first impressions of camp were painful.
Starving, weak, and feeling sick, I walked through the camp knowing that the next day I would become part of the slave labor force strengthening Yeltsin’s prestige and helping him climb to the highest rungs of power.  Not counting the prisons, there were forty-five labor camps in the Sverdlosk region with seventy thousand prisoner-slaves pushing Boris Yeltsin ever higher.  These seventy thousand prisoner-slaves were working double shifts in return for pig-slop.  At a dizzying pace, they felled trees, built houses, and toiled in workshops, prodded on by the butts of semi-automatics and the fists of murderous work-brigade leaders. Each day, the prison camp’s chief administrator put his progress report on Yeltsin’s desk together with the reports from other plants and factories.  Yeltsin’s quota was always perfect.  Under his direction, the Sverdlosk region had gained high esteem in the Kremlin. It had been easy.  If some factory was unable to meet its quota with its regular workers, prisoners made up the difference.  Many factories had even established workshops directly in the labor camps.  In Camp # 10, there were workshops for the rubber factory, a lathe belonging to the Ural Mechanical Factory, and workshops for the cable factory.  In addition, several construction firms used prison labor in their building projects.  None of these outfits had trouble fulfilling its quota.  There were always people like head-trustee Kymyshev, who could knock out the quota with prison labor by assigning double shifts.  Yeltsin had to have a clean record at the Kremlin.
People died in the labor camps every day.  They were crushed by logs and killed in construction accidents.  Some of them were unable to bear the conditions any longer and committed suicide by hanging themselves. The guards shot some of them for trying to escape but others died slowly from hard labor and starvation. Their numbers always remained the same.  New convoys of prisoners continued to arrive every day.
The guards took me to the labor camp barbers-shop.  The barber was a prisoner too.  He gave me a shaving kit. As I shaved myself, I saw my own reflection for the first time since I had been arrested.  I looked in the mirror and did not recognize myself. A stranger stared back at me – haggard, thin, pale, with dark circles under his eyes.  After I finished shaving, I got a shower.  Then they issued me prison clothing so I could blend in with all the other two thousand prisoners in Prison Camp #10.  I looked like everyone else.  I wore coarse, canvas boots, gray pants, a jacket, a vest lined with a thin layer of cotton, and a cotton hat.  I wore rags for socks.  Prisoners were not permitted anything else.  The prisoners here were work animals and this clothing was considered sufficient.   The logic was simple: to get as much as possible from the prisoners and give nothing in return.  There was only one response to complaints: “No one invited you here.”

I spent the night in the barracks reserved for prisoners in transit.  There were about thirty people there, mostly from the Urals.  A young Tartar boy slept next to me.  He spoke Russian poorly and I did not find out why he was in the camp.  He tried explaining it to me but I did not understand him.  I had no idea then that he would not last long.  Two months later, he tore his pants into strips, made a rope, and hanged himself one night.  I had no notion then that he would be unable to endure the mad work pace and would prefer the noose to the daily beatings by the brigade-leader.
On the other side of me slept a fat, elderly man.  He had been transformed into a slave for a year for failing to pay attention while driving his motorcycle through an intersection.  He had caused an accident, which made the other car hit a pole and damage its radiator.  He had been responsible for his son’s broken leg.
In the morning, all the prisoners in the convoy were taken to camp headquarters and assigned their work brigades.  Our gray, silent group of prisoners stood in front of the camp administrator’s office waiting for a turn to go into the office where our fate would be decided.  One by one, we went into the office and a few minutes later came back out holding a paper.  The brigade leaders, brazen, ruthless criminals, were waiting to meet us when we came out. Somewhat later, I found out that these prisoners had become brigade leaders by bribing the administration.  Most of them had been imprisoned for robbery, extortion, money speculation, or bribery but, even here, they were not afraid of giving bribes and the administration was not afraid of accepting them. To maintain their positions as brigade leaders and to avoid doing any work themselves, they terrorized their brigades.
My turn came.  I stepped into the camp director’s office.  There were two other men in the office with the director Babchenko – Colonel Dzherzhensky, the prison regime coordinator, and Major Malinkovich, the operations director.  I stood before them in my prison uniform, which hung on me like a sack.  All three of them looked at me with curiosity.  
“Not one labor camp wanted to take you but I took you,” said the camp director.  “I heard that you respect Jews and that you have many Jewish friends.  All three of us are Jews, but don’t get us confused with other Jews.  They’re not Jews; they’re kikes.  Remember, if you try carrying on your propaganda here, if you break the prison rules, or if you relay any kind of information to the outside, I’ll send you to a place where they’ll eat you alive.”
“You don’t need to threaten me.  I’ve been to worse places.” I replied.
“What insolence!” responded Babchenko.  “ How dare you mock us!” 
All the time Babchenko had been talking to me, Dzherzhensky had remained silent and Malinkovich had paced around the office swearing. Now Malinkovich came towards me seemingly to hit me but then he stopped abruptly, dropped his hand between his legs, and grabbed his crotch.  “This is what I think of you and your religion.  We’ve broken better men than you here.”  
“Now, now, Vladimir!” interrupted Dzherzhensky.  “We are civilized people and need to talk politely.  Just put him in the punishment brigade.”
“I agree,” concurred Babchenko, handing me a paper assigning me to the punishment brigade, detachment 3, brigade #31.
I walked out the office door.  At the threshold, the brigade leader Yurchenko, a gypsy, was already waiting for me.  Only twenty-three years old, he seemed to have already lost his humanity, that is, if he had had any to begin with.  As time went on, I became convinced of this fact.
It was not easy to become a brigade leader. Of all the two thousand prisoners in Labor Camp #10, only sixty were brigade leaders.  Since the job required having all the qualities of an inveterate scoundrel, all the brigade leaders were murderers.  If any normal people happened to slip into the position of brigade leader, they were quickly removed for not having the will to torment other prisoners. They were reassigned to punishment brigades. From among the sixty inveterate scoundrels, one super scoundrel was chosen to be in charge of the punishment brigade.  This job required a man, who had absolutely no compassion for anyone, even for his own father. 
When I was first assigned to the punishment brigade, I did not understand this.  I had no idea what a punishment brigade really was.  All I noticed was that the brigade leaders were better dressed than the prisoners.  As I followed Yurchenko, I compared my clothing to his.  I had been issued heavy, coarse boots but the brigade leader was wearing Armenian boots.  My cap was made of cotton, which provided no protection from the wind but Yurchenko’s hat was made of leather and lined with fur.  I had plain, thin cotton gloves but his were fur-lined leather.  I found out later that the brigade leaders always wore this kind of glove to protect their hands while knocking out prisoners’ teeth. Yurchenko’s padded jacket was different from mine too.  It was long and warm. 

Chapter 30
The Punishment Brigade

Yurchenko led me to the barracks that housed Detachment 3, Brigade # 31.  His conversation with me was so free and easy that I did not realize he was a sadist.  The third detachment was housed on the third floor of the barracks.  There were one hundred and fifty prisoners in the detachment.  They were divided into four brigades.  Brigade # 31 had thirty-five people.
The double-deck, plank bunk beds were arranged in four rows.  Each brigade had a row.  Our bunk beds were near the window.  Yurchenko showed me the bunk where I was supposed to sleep and then gave me a slip of paper so I could be issued a mattress. He told me to pick up the mattress after lunch. “The first month,” he told me. “you’ll be fed on the first ‘ration level.’ In a month, if I see you fulfilling your quota, I’ll put you on the second ‘ration level.’” I had no idea what first or second ‘ration level’ meant.
Half an hour later, someone shouted, “Brigade 31, get in line for lunch!” Everyone in the barracks began bustling about.  Thirty prisoners ran downstairs.  I went downstairs too.  As I looked at the other prisoners overtaking me, I noticed how terribly thin they were.  Their clothes hung on them as if on hangers.
The prisoners in the brigade arranged themselves into rows, five prisoners per row.  I was also standing in line but for some reason, the line did not move. “Why aren’t we moving into the mess hall?” I asked the prisoner standing next to me.
“We’re waiting for Yurchenko and his family.”
At last, Yurchenko arrived, accompanied by five other prisoners.  They stood out sharply from the gray mass of prisoners. They were dressed almost like Yurchenko and it was obvious from their faces that they had a good life in prison.  These prisoners were the brigade leader’s assistants.  They were responsible for getting the prisoners to fulfill their quota by beating them and forcing them to work. They acted as supervisors but everything was unofficial.  According to Soviet law, they too were supposed to be serving out their sentences by working, fulfilling their quotas, and atoning to society for their guilt with hard labor.  Society did not know that there were any such supervisors and no official commission even guessed their existence in the camps.  According to the brigade leader’s report, all five of them worked double shifts every day.  In reality, they spent their working hours drinking tea and lifting weights in a separate room where they could see the workshop floor through the window.  One of them walked around the workshop with a club in his hand making sure that the prisoners maintained the proper work tempo. Sometimes, all five of them had to pound down on the brigade.  
 
We finally went into the mess hall where there were about three hundred people. There were three rows of tables, each table seating ten people.  There was a pot of pig-slop on every table.  Everyone walked up to the tables but no one sat down.  Everyone waited for Yurchenko to give the order.  He finally allowed the brigade to sit down.
Yurchenko and the supervisors took the six largest pieces of bread.  Then they selected the most edible portions of the slop from all of the brigade’s pots and gave the rest to the brigade. They ate like wild boars.  They had to be the strongest men in the brigade.
The first ‘ration level’ was about the same as I had had in prison, but here in the labor camp, I had to do hard labor and fulfill a quota. It consisted of grits boiled in water. The second ‘ration level’ was a little better.  It consisted of grits boiled in water with a little fat added to it.  For the main meal at noon, we got soup. Instead of meat, the first ‘ration level’ had chicken beaks and claws added to the soup, while the second level occasionally had chicken necks.  The brigade leader and his supervisors usually took the necks.  For the second course, there was usually porridge, the same as in the morning. A teapot with half-sweet tea was allotted to each ten people.  Each person was supposed to get about a half-cup of tea but the brigade leader and his supervisors poured themselves full cups.  There was no tea at the main meal on the first ‘ration level.’ For the evening meal, we got porridge again.  At the first ‘ration level,’ the porridge was boiled in water but on the second level, some fat was added. Eight ounces of bread were added to the evening meal on the second ration level.
I looked around the mess hall and near the entrance noticed two tables standing a distance away from the other tables.  The people sitting around the table were exceedingly thin and dirty.  They were feeding on leftovers from the tables.  They had gathered up the soup bowls and were licking them clean.  If they got any slop at all, it was only liquid.  They were called ‘pigs’ here too.
The homosexuals sat around the second table.  They were in a little better condition. The prisoners called them “cocks’ or ‘cock’s combs.’  No one called them by name.  Even the dubaks did not address them by their last names.  They just shouted “Cock, come here” or ‘Cock’s comb, do this.”
“Stand up!” commanded Yurchenko. He and his parasites had finished eating and were not interested in anyone else.  Whether we had finished eating or not, we had to stand up and stay standing while our brigade leader went into the kitchen and arranged with the cooks to return later in the evening to eat roasted potatoes and drink the milk meant for the camp hospital.  The cooks, the brigade leaders, and the dubaks always drank the milk.  The hospital got water with a little bit of milk added for color.
Yurchenko came out of the kitchen and issued the command.  I again marched in the line of slaves.
	After the noon meal, I received a mattress.  Yurchenko allowed everyone, who so desired, to get some sleep because we had to work the night shift.  I lay down on the bunk, closed my eyes, and began praying.  I was standing on the threshold of new trials.  Some kind of cry and noise interrupted my prayer.  I sat up and saw Yurchenko beating a prisoner, who was lying on the floor.  He was kicking him with his boots.  Showing no mercy, he kicked him in the face, the stomach, and the back.  Then he ordered him to stand up, saying, “Make sure there are two hundred rubles in my pocket within a week!”
The siren went off. “Inspection!” shouted the brigade leader.  We had four inspections a day.  They inspected us by detachment and by brigade.  It was always the same.  A dubak stood in front of the brigade with a bag with two compartments.  One compartment contained cardboard cards with photographs and pertinent information about each prisoner.  The dubak took out a card and called out the prisoner’s last name.  The prisoner took off his hat, named the statute under which he had been convicted, and his term of imprisonment.  Then he stepped out of line and stood on the opposite side of the room.  Then the dubak put that card into the bag’s second compartment and called out the next name.
	An hour and a half after inspection, we were taken to the evening meal.  At twelve o’clock midnight, we were driven out into the yard for another inspection.  After that inspection, the brigade either went back to the barracks or to work.  That night, by the light of searchlights, the column of prisoners in the punishment brigade marched off to work in the rubber goods factory.

	As soon as the punishment brigade prisoners crossed the shop’s threshold, they immediately rushed to their workstations and began working.  No one knew what the quota was because the brigade leader made that decision each day in accordance with his own reckoning.  I stood in the middle of the workshop not knowing what to do.  Everyone around me was busy.  The work was proceeding full speed ahead.  Fifteen minutes later, Yurchenko came up to me and ordered me to accompany him to the workshop manager’s office.
	Syutin, the workshop manager, was very short but very lively.  He had unlimited power over the two hundred slaves in his workshop.  He appeared to be about thirty-five years old.  When I first walked into his office, he introduced himself as the shop manager but also as a KGB Operations worker.  He was Major Malinkovich’s assistant.  
	“You will soon realize that this is no vacation resort,” he told me.  “You will be convinced of this soon.”  Turning to Yurchenko, he ordered, “Petya, show him our instruments.”
From a cupboard, Yurchenko took some rubber clubs, a rubber device worn over the hand while delivering blows, and a ‘numchuk,’ two sticks joined together by a short chain, a device used by karate experts.  “These are the catalysts we use to help us carry out our work plan.  Of course, your situation is different than the other prisoners.  If we were to use them on you, you would slander us abroad saying that we beat you.  For the time being, I’ve been given the order not to use them on you. We’ll just drive your stupid beliefs out of your head with work, work, and more work. You won’t have time to think about anything but how and where to get something to eat and how to get some sleep.”
“Are you a Communist?” I asked Syutkin.
“Yes, I am,” he answered with pride.
“May I assume you are a confirmed Communist?”
“Yes.  That’s my ideology.”
“In that case, you must be familiar with Communism’s moral code.”
“Of course, I know the code.”
“Then how am I supposed to understand the phrase in your code that says, ‘In the USSR, work is a deed of honor, valor, and heroism?’  How can you use work to drive out what you consider ‘strange,’ Christian beliefs?  Perhaps you’re not really a Communist but are just saying you are because it’s so profitable. Maybe your Communism is a complete sham and your code is only smoke in your eyes.  Your words and actions completely contradict Communism’s laws and moral code.”
Not knowing how to respond, Syutkin stared at me.  After a moment’s pause, Yurchenko rescued him saying, “How dare he talk to you like that!  With your permission, I’ll knock him in the snout.”
He put the rubber devices on his hands and rushed at me with a savage glint in his eye.  “Wait, Petya!” shouted Syutkin.  “You can always beat him later but right now he needs re-education.”
“You can’t teach me ideology with fists and torture.  You may believe that your ideology is the most modern and progressive ideology in the world but I wan to say something about my Christian beliefs too. Just like you, I consider my Christian beliefs to be true.  That’s why I’m here.  I lost my freedom and endured suffering and humiliation for defending my Christian principles. Nothing convinced me to abandon my beliefs and you won’t either.  You’re turning work into punishment.”
Syutkin looked at me mutely and blinked his eyes, trying to think of something to say.  Yurchenko flew into a rage.  “See how he’s talking to you.  See how he’s humiliating you.  I’ll punch him in the snout no matter what.”  He grabbed the rubber club.
Syutkin stood up saying, “Petya, I value your patriotism but back off!  I’ll talk to him now.”  Turning to me he said, “Citizen Perchatkin, you’re a dangerous man. You’re an anti-Communist.  Now I understand why you were imprisoned and why you ended up in the punishment brigade from day one.”
Turning to the brigade leader once more, Syutkin ordered, “Put him to work and personally make sure he doesn’t shirk his duties.  Bring him back to my office in six months.  We’ll see how he talks to me then and what happens to his beliefs. Now, put him to work.  There’s no point wasting time.”

The workers in the punishment brigade made hydraulic, rubber hoses.  The hoses were thirty feet long and had diameters ranging from one to ten inches.  Machines were used in constructing the hoses only when the work could not be done by hand.  To make a hose, a prisoner had to place the specified size of aluminum tube into a machine. First, he clamped the tube shut at one end and affixed the other end to rollers so that it would not move around while it was being rotated.  Then, two prisoners working together applied a strip of wet rubber along the full length of the tube.  Then one of the prisoners turned on the motor while the second prisoner held a reel of thick, sticky tape and wound it around the tube.  The tube spun very fast and the prisoner had to get the tape wound around the tube in perfect circles.  As the tape coiled tightly around the tube, the prisoner had to hold the heavy reel in front of him and run some twenty-five feet.  Simultaneously, he had to check and see that the tape was winding around the tube evenly.  The procedure was repeated several times, first with a reel of wet rubber, then with a reel of wire, then another reel of tape, and lastly, a reel of nylon cord.  When each hose was finished, the prisoner loaded it onto a cart, put a new tube in the machine, and started over. When the cart was fully loaded, it was taken to a kiln for processing.   
To make one hose, a prisoner had to run three hundred and sixty feet.  Since he made between two hundred and two hundred and fifty hoses per day, it meant he had to run ten to twenty miles per shift.
There were several of these machines in the workshop and as I stood watching the thin, hungry men running to and from them, the brigade leader hit me in the side.  “You still have to earn the right to work at those machines,” he told me.
The brigade leader pointed to a long table on the left side of the workshop.  There was a man sitting at the table unwinding nylon cords from the hoses by hand. Once the hoses on the cart had been put through the kiln and had undergone the heating process, this man placed them on special rollers, untied the cord at one end of each hose, and stripped off the coiled cord from the whole length of hose.  I was elated when the brigade leader led me to this table and did not put me to work on the machine.  I realized my error by the end of the first day.
“Hey Nikolaev,” said Yurchenko to the man at the table. “I brought your replacement.  Show him what he needs to do and then come to my office.”
Yurchenko turned around and began watching two prisoners working nearby.  They were removing the tubes from the finished hoses.  “Hey, you cocks, why are you working so slow?  Look how much you’re backed up.  Are you trying to mess up the quota?”
He whistled for Vanka, the supervisor, who ran up to him immediately.  He was a young man about twenty years old, tall, with an athletic build.  Everyone used Vanka’s nickname, ‘Hohol.’*  
“Hey, Hohol, if you don’t want to work at this machine yourself, you’d better get them moving!’ shouted Yurchenko.
The Hohol’s face became like an animal and he hissed through his missing front teeth, which must have been knocked out in prison.  He only needed two blows to knock down the prisoners.  One of the prisoners jumped up immediately and began frenziedly pulling the tube from the hose. The second prisoner rolled on the floor, writhing in pain.  The Hohol had hit his kidney.  The first prisoner was not able to do anything with the hose.  It was stuck to the tube and the prisoner did not have enough strength to pull it free.  The Hohol growled savagely, pushed the prisoner aside with his strong, large hands, pulled the hose off the tube, and then used the hose to strike any prisoner he could reach.  Yurchenko stopped him saying, “Vanka, don’t tear the hose!”
Nikolaev began explaining the work to me.  “There’s no quota,” he said.  “You have to do as many hoses as they bring you, maybe two or three hundred.  Anything’s possible. If you get behind, Vanka will beat you.  He’s responsible for this part of the workshop.  Don’t work with gloves on because you won’t be able to undo the knots.  The cord is slippery and your fingers have to be very strong to hold onto it.  Old cord is no good because it has knots in it.  The knots stick to the rubber.  Sometimes, there are ten knots per cord.  It takes a long time to twist them free.  Vanka-the Hohol damaged my liver because of one of those knots.  We get this old cord from a local factory, where the workers aren’t prisoners.  When they scrap the cord and throw it away, it’s sent here.  I’m from this area and I worked in one of those shops before I was in prison. They use machines to strip the cord in those workshops.  Those workers have only one-fourth the quota we have here.  Be sure to wrap your fingers and the palms of your hands with the hose-tape.  It’s a proven remedy.  You’ll get blisters anyway.
As he continued talking to me, he picked torn strips of tape from his hand.  I looked at his hands.  They were covered with blisters and sores.
“How did you end up in the punishment brigade?” he asked me.
“I don’t know.  I was sent here right from transit.”
“From transit?” he asked surprised.  “No one comes here directly from transit.”
“How about you?” I asked.  “How did you end up here?”
‘I hit a dubak in the face.  Well, okay, now get to work unwinding the cord.  I have to go.  You look strong, so if Vanka tries beating you, belt him hard and fast.  If you can knock him down, he’ll be the one working at the machine and you’ll be the supervisor.  That’s the rule here. Be sure to knock him down before the other supervisors come running.  If you don’t get him with the first punch, the other supervisors will get here and finish you off.  All five of them will kick the hell out of you.”
I took the tape, wound it around my fingers and palms, put a tube on the rollers, and began unwinding the cord.  For the first few hours, I thought the work was not so bad.  The only problem I had was when I ran into knots.  It was hard untying them.  By noon, however, my fingers were numb and I was so tired that I could hardly hold onto the cord.  
The siren announcing the noon meal saved me.  We ate the usual pig-slop and then it was back to work on miles of cord.  The shift seemed endlessly long.  By the time the shift was over, my shoulders and arms ached and I could not feel my fingers at all.  Although I had wrapped my fingers with tape, I had bleeding blisters.  After work, there was another inspection.
When we got back to the barracks in the morning, the day shift had already left for work and the swing shift was still sleeping.  We burst into the barracks, stomping our boots.  Some of the prisoners were exchanging remarks, some of them were swearing or walking around searching for salt.  Everyone took out the eight ounces of bread they had saved from dinner.  They sat down on the bunks and ate the bread, sprinkling it with salt and washing it down with water.  The brigade leader and his supervisors had something to eat too but they had bread and sausage, tea, and candy.  All of it had been confiscated from the parcels the prisoners had received from the outside. 

Chapter 31
Degradation and Privilege

Here in camp everyone lived in families.  For one reason or another, a few prisoners would be drawn together.  Perhaps they had come from the same town, shared the same ethnic background, or had had the same kind of job before prison.  Whatever the reason, they joined into groups and lived helping each other.  It was bad to be alone.  The prisoners who were alone ended up putting a noose around their necks.
I did not have any friends yet.  Neither did I have eight ounces of bread.  I lay down on the bunk immediately, prayed, and tried to fall asleep but could not.  Hunger gnawed at me like an animal.  It tormented me and drove away sleep.  All the people around me were chewing bread.  The enticing aroma of sausage wafting towards me made me feel irritated.  “If only I had a little piece of bread,” I thought.  I imagined sprinkling it with coarse, prison salt, biting it off in small pieces, and washing it down with water.
I closed my eyes and plugged my ears so I could not see or hear the people chewing but I could still smell the aroma of the camp bread.  I could not fall asleep so I got up and went to get some water.  I drank one cup, a second, then a third.  I wanted to deaden the pangs of hunger.  I lay down again but the hunger did not go away.  About an hour later, I fell asleep.
I did not sleep long.  The second shift’s stomping boots woke me up.  The prisoners in the second shift woke us up just as we had awakened them.  After having just a little sleep, I was no longer tormented by hunger.  I fell asleep again but I had a strange dream.  I dreamt I was sleeping and my breathing seemed more rapid as if I were rushing to catch up on my sleep.
The order to go to the noon meal tore us from our sleep again and roused us from our bunks like springs.  Sleepy people ran around getting washed, getting lined up, and going to the mess hall.  After lunch, we still needed sleep.  Now I understood what Syutkin was talking about when he said, “You will only think about getting enough to eat and how to get some sleep.” 
Everything had been organized in such a way that each shift disturbed the sleep of the other shifts.  The third shift got up for work at 12:00 o’clock midnight and woke up the first shift that had gone to sleep at 10:00 P.M.  At 2:00 A.M., the second shift returned from work and woke up the first shift.  At 6:00 A.M., the first shift got up and did not give the second shift a chance to sleep.  At 9:00 A.M., our third shift returned from work and prevented the second shift from sleeping.  Then it was all repeated again.  When one shift of prisoners got back to the barracks, they stomped their boots and chewed their bread.  Sleeping was impossible.

After a week of work, I started dreaming about unwinding cord in my sleep. In my dreams, I was pulling cord that was piled around me like a mountain.  I pushed it away, kicked it with my feet, but the mountain grew larger.  Then Vanka-the Hohol appeared laughing wildly and tearing the cord with his metal teeth.  Then Syutkin appeared asking, “Do you want something to eat?”
The bleeding blisters on my hands festered and would not heal.  I did not complain as Syutkin had predicted I would.  I kept remembering his words:  “We’ll see if his beliefs disappear.” The wounds festered even more.  I did not know if my resistance had diminished to such a point that it prevented healing or if my hands had become infected.  I found out where the camp infirmary was located and decided to ask for some ointment.
There was a long line in the infirmary’s corridor.  For the most part, the people waiting there were as haggard as I was. Not wanting to talk about his own problems, everyone waited silently.  The doctor took a long time.  Sometimes he declared that the prisoners were malingering and sent them to a punishment cell directly from the infirmary.  The line moved slowly.
	Suddenly a dubak flung open the door with a bang and marched into the infirmary.  Two prisoners walked behind him carrying another prisoner on a stretcher.  The man was strapped down on the stretcher.  He jerked around trying to get up but the straps held him tight.  He swore and cursed at the prisoners who carried him.  Around his neck was a noose, its frayed end dangling from the stretcher. 
“Hey, quack, check him over!” demanded the dubak, addressing the doctor in normal fashion.  “We had to take him down from the noose again.  The little skunk can’t even hang himself right. He could have found a better place than the smokehouse.  Everyone else can hang himself like a normal person but this guy can’t do it right!”  
They released the poor man from the straps, took the noose from around his neck , and the doctor examined him.  
“Now what?” asked the dubak.  “Can I put him in a punishment cell?”
“That’s the only place for him.”
“Then sign the paper.”
When the doctor left, I went up to the poor man.  I did not really know what to say.  He was so young, not more than twenty-five years old.  “Listen, young man, I’m in the punishment brigade.  I’m not a criminal.  I’m here for my faith.”
I had prepared words to tell him about Christ and about eternal life but when he raised his eyes to me, I could see, that cursing the whole word and himself, he had already sentenced himself to death.  His terrifying eyes were filled with grief and suffering. He looked at me and cried, “Why did they cut me down again.  They torment me but they don’t let me die.  No matter what, I’m going to hang myself.  They taunt me so much I cant do anything, not even hang myself.  I don’t want to be a slave.  You understand?  I don’t want to.  I can’t.  Maybe you can but I don’t  have any strength left. I don’t want to be a slave.” He cried a man’s terrible tears.
Several more dubaks came into the infirmary and led him away.  Several months later, he managed to hang himself.
The prisoners’ callousness and indifference to everything that was going on always shocked me.  I tried to understand this atmosphere of callousness and terror because I wanted to change it somehow.  Later on, I was able to do this but for now the other prisoners in the infirmary only knew how to curse the people who committed suicide.  They did not utter one word of pity or compassion.  One quite elderly prisoner with a weather-beaten face exclaimed, “ It’s understandable that he wants to hang himself.  That is his business, but he didn’t do it right.  He should have done something to help us remember him with kind words.  Before he hanged himself, he should have gone up to a dubak or a brigade leader and cracked his skull. That would have helped other people. Before he hanged himself, he should have finished off five dubaks.  That would have made the rest of us better off and fewer people would have to hang themselves.”  
They treated my wounds in the infirmary, bandaged my hands, and gave me a note requesting Syutkin give me work on the machine, at least temporarily.  I gave the brigade leader the note but he told me, “We don’t have any light work, but I’ll let Syutkin know about you.”
Syutkin ordered me to be put to work at the machine.  Prisoner Kamissarov had had a finger torn off while working at the machine and they needed a person to replace him.  The work at the machine was not hard but it was dangerous.  To avoid losing a finger, a person had to pay close attention, work with agility, and move at the right tempo.

By this time, I had become quite aware of what was going on in camp.  The administration was on criminal rampage.  The prisoners saw it all, kept quiet, and endured it.  In our brigade, there was a war veteran by the name of Karpukhin, who was more than sixty years old.  The statute and terms under which he was convicted allowed early release but people like him had to undergo a second trial in the labor camp to determine if they could be released before the end of their term. After his trial, I asked him what had gone on there.  Karpukhin turned out to be an eccentric person.  He had  decided to give the prosecutor, judges, and jurors a hint about what was happening in camp.  He had hoped they would arrange an inspection and check into things.  Up until the trial, Karpukhin had sincerely believed that no one beyond the labor camp walls knew what was going on here. Karpukhin told me that after his case has been reviewed, just before the decision was to be made regarding his release, the judge had asked him a question.  “Tell us, “ said the judge, “Has being in labor camp convinced you to stop committing the crimes that would bring you back to camp?”
“Citizen judge,” responded Karpukhin, “as you know, I’m already an old man.  I’ve seen a lot in my life.  I served in the war and was surrounded by Nazis.  I crossed the front lines several times, served six months in a German camp until I escaped. Then I was sent to the front again.  I’ve seen so much but I’ve never seen the likes of what’s happening here.  I heard that there were terrible conditions in the Fascist prison camps – evil and sadism – but I never saw it personally until this labor camp, I’ve seen it all myself. I’m an old man but I’m forced to do the same hard labor as the young men.  I have to fulfill the same quota even if I can’t do as much as the young men.  I don’t have the health they have.  With the constant lack of sleep, the lack of food, even starvation, I don’t have any strength.  They beat me for this.  Guards young enough to be my grandchildren beat me.  If I were free, I’d already be on a pension. There’s no end to the bad conditions in camp. The prisoners can’t endure it and commit suicide.”
Karpukhin looked at me and added, “I thought the judge would be interested but he interrupted me and said, ‘Well, Karpukhin, that means you understand very well that you must not end up here again.’  I told the judge I did understand and that I would even tell my grandchildren about it.”

A month had passed when the brigade leader came up to me and told me that I had not fulfilled my quota for the whole month.  I was amazed.  I had done my work and had been able to do everything I was given.  Yurchenko stubbornly maintained that I had not fulfilled the quota and would, therefore, be kept on the first level of rations.
“What is the quota? Who set it?  How much do I have to do per shift?” I asked. 
“I set the quota and you will do as much as I give you.”
“But that’s what I did – just what you gave me – but I still didn’t fulfill the quota.  Where is the work plan.  Show it to me.  It has to be confirmed officially.”
“You’re asking for it!  It’s too bad I’m not allowed to beat you,” raged Yurchenko.  “I’m not showing you any work plan.”
“Okay, then I’ll write a complaint to the prosecutor.”
“Go ahead, write to whomever you want.  Other people have tried.”

I wrote a complaint to the prosecutor describing in detail everything that was taking place in the punishment brigade.  The only letter prisoners were allowed to seal was a letter to the Supervising Prosecutor.  By law, the camp administration could not open these letters or hold them back.  
A few days later, Syutkin summoned me.  “Well, Perchatkin, before you were put in prison, you slandered the Soviet government and now that you’re here, you are slandering the camp administration by writing complaints to the Supervising Prosecutor.”
“How do you know what I wrote?”
“Your complaint is on my desk.”
“You don’t have the right to read letters to the Supervising Prosecutor.  Are you working as a prosecutor in addition to your work with KGB Operations?”
“We have the right to do anything we want.  We check the complaints and don’t let them through. We don’t want the prisoners slandering the camp administration.  The prosecutor has enough to do without you. If the prosecutor ends up coming here and the complaint cannot be confirmed, then the prisoners, who wrote the complaint, have to write a statement that they deliberately slandered the administration.  Smart prisoners understand that prosecutors come and go but that we are always here.”
Realizing that letters to the prosecutor were opened and held back in this camp, I told Syutkin:  “I’ll write another complaint describing everything, including the fact that you hold back letters to the prosecutor.  If that complaint doesn’t get through, I’ll go on a hunger strike.  I’ll find a way to get the information to the outside.”
“Go ahead and write but do it before you get your hands broken.”

I wrote a few more complaints to the prosecutor. The other prisoners found out what I was doing and several of them decided to support me.  They wrote letters too.  Many prisoners began coming to me for advice.  They asked me why I had been sentenced.  When I began telling them about myself, word about me spread all over the camp.  The prisoners began to respect me.  They included me in their discussions and shared their bread with me.  After work, some of the prisoners invited me to drink tea with them.
Several days later, Dzerzhinsky summoned me.  “What’s with you Perchatkin? You’re not fulfilling your quota and you’re even complaining to the prosecutor.”
“First of all,” I responded, “you can’t turn me into a mute, work animal.  I don’t know what the quota is.  Neither does the whole punishment brigade.  I don’t intend to fulfill the supervisors’ quota.  They should be working too, not just beating up prisoners.  Put your supervisors to work at the machine too.  Then they won’t have to beat anyone to meet the quota.  Why don’t you get the mess hall straightened out?  Not only are your supervisors beating the prisoners, they are taking their food.  The whole time I’ve been working here, I’ve never seen my supervisor, Vanka-the Hohol, make a single hose but he always eats at the second ration level.  In addition, the brigade leader, his supervisors, and the cooks chow down in the mess hall after work.  They steal food that is meant for the hospital.  Take a look at what’s going on in your camp.  Take a look at how many suicides there are.”
“This is none of your business,” said Dzerzhinsky calmly. “We will check out your complaints and talk to everyone who wrote what you dictated.  If the facts are not confirmed, if it turns out that you pressured the prisoners into writing complaints, we will increase your prison term.”
Dzerzhinsky called the guards and told them, “Put him in solitary for fifteen days.  Let him sit there and do some thinking.  In the meantime, we’ll question the other prisoners while he’s not around to influence them.”
I was taken to the solitary confinement cell and forced to change my clothes.  They took away the clothes I was wearing and gave me a shirt, some pants that only reached to my knees, and some worn-out slippers.
  The cell was about three and a half feet wide and six feet long. Its walls and floor were concrete.  The bunk was bare wood and there was no mattress or blanket.  At six o’ clock in the morning, the bunk was raised up against the wall and locked in place.  It was lowered back down at ten o’ clock in the evening.  It was so cold in the cell that it was impossible to fall asleep.
On the morning of the first day, they gave me one cup of warm water.  For lunch, they gave me a half loaf of bread and a cup of water.  For supper, they gave me another cup of warm water.  Then there began what the prisoners called the ‘skip a days.’ One day they fed you and the next day, they didn’t, not even water.  On the morning of the second day, they gave me a cup of water. For lunch, I got four spoonfuls of some kind of broth they called ‘soup,’ two or three spoonfuls of porridge, boiled in water, and a half loaf of bread.  For supper, they gave me another cup of water.  They next day, they gave me nothing.  It was a “skip day.”  I suffered from hunger the whole fifteen days, but the hunger was nothing in comparison to the torment I suffered from the cold.  I thought I would get sick but I didn’t.
On the morning of the sixteenth day, they let me out of solitary.  I went back to the barracks, where I got the feeling they had been waiting for me.  On my bunk lay a few pieces of candy and two pieces of bread, spread with some kind of fat and jam.  I sat down on the bunk and they brought me a cup of hot tea.  I drank the tea and ate the bread.  It seemed like I had never eaten anything more delicious.  I resolved to have this kind of bread for breakfast every day after I was released.
The prisoners told me that Dzerzhinsky had summoned every prisoner, who had written a complaint.  He summoned the brigade leader too.  He demanded that the prisoners recant their complaints and that they write statements admitting that I had forced them to write the complaints.  All together, twelve people had written complaints.  Three of them recanted.  One of the three was required to write a statement to the prosecutor claiming that I had forced them to write complaints about the administration and the brigade leader.  After they had been allowed to leave, they could still hear Dzerzhinsky screaming at Yurchenko saying, “No matter what you do, don’t let them complain.  If there are any complaints, you’ll answer for it.”
I went to work again.  Much to my astonishment, I saw three supervisors working.  Vanka-the Hohol and a supervisor we called ‘Tank’ were pulling finished hoses off the tubes. A third supervisor was operating the kiln.  There were rumors going around the brigade that Yurchenko wanted revenge on the people, who had complained.
We worked peacefully for a week.  Then, one morning, when we had returned from work and were just falling asleep, the siren went off for a full camp inspection.  Everyone was forced outside into the yard for a card check on everyone in the camp.  There was a rumor that someone had escaped but they could find no trace of him.  When it was finally determined that someone was missing, the guards herded part of the prisoners into the work area.  They locked them in the workshops.  The remaining prisoners were herded into the mess hall.  I was locked in with that group.  During the time we were locked up, the guards, carrying semi-automatics, searched the whole camp area with dogs, trying to make sure that the escapee had not hidden somewhere in camp.  Then they began searching beyond the camp area.
The people in the mess hall spent the time smoking and talking.  Accustomed to every possible degradation, the prisoners, who were supposed to be working, thoroughly enjoyed their chance to rest. I began noticing that one of the prisoners was looking at me attentively.  He was about my age.  He was trying to read the nametag on my jacket.  He came closer to me, looked at the name tag, and cried out, “Hey Valik, come here.  I found him.”
A powerfully built, young man, about twenty years old, walked up to me.  “This is Valik,” said the first prisoner.  “My name is Yevgeny.  We’ve been looking for you around camp for a long time and you turned out to be in the punishment brigade.  That’s right above us on the third floor.  The whole camp is talking about you and we wanted to get acquainted.  What shift do you work?”
“The third.”
“We work the first.  Come visit us this evening.  We’re in the thirteenth division.  When you arrive, just ask for Valik.  Everybody knows him because he knocked out his brigade leader’s teeth.  Now everybody is afraid of him.  Everyone in the division knows him.”
They told me about themselves briefly.  Valik had been in the Army.  He was an athlete, an accomplished athlete.  He took part in competitions all over the Soviet Union.  Once, he went to a competition in Minsk.  He was from an area just south of Minsk.  He had decided to go home and visit his mother.  He had a fiancé there too.  He stayed at home for three days and was late for the competition.  The Army considered it desertion and he was sentenced to four years in prison.
Evgeny, who was nicknamed Zhenya, was a geologist.  He had spent the whole summer in the ‘taiga.’ When they got back to the base, there was a banquet in their honor.  All the geologists got drunk and started fighting.  Yevgeny broke someone’s jaw and got a two-year sentence.  When I met them, Yevgeny had almost finished his term but Valik was just starting his.  He had been in camp only four months.
After lunch, we were all released from the mess hall.  We were marched out by divisions and by brigade. First, we marched in the direction of headquarters and then turned toward the barracks.  As our column of men made its turn toward the barracks, we saw a frozen corpse on the road.  It had been placed on a tarp for everyone to see.  The columns of prisoners had been deliberately led past the corpse so that everyone could see that escape was impossible.  The closer I came to the body, the more sure I was that I recognized the man as the prisoner in the hospital, who had tried to hang himself.  This time he had found a place where he could not be discovered immediately.  The dogs had found him.  I was very upset that I had not been able to help him.
I did not go to visit Valik and Zhenya that evening.  That night, as I worked, I kept thinking about the dead man’s words, “I don’t want to be a slave.  You understand?  I don’t want to.  You may be able to do it, but I don’t have the strength.  I don’t want to.”
I stopped the machine to adjust it.  The old man, Karpukhin, walked up to me.  He had not been granted early release.  “I can see that what you saw today made quite an impression on you," he said. “I’ve been here for three years and I still can’t get used to it.  Your reaction means that they haven’t destroyed the humanity in you yet.  You know, I have moments when I think it would have been better not to be born than to live like this.  We have to endure everything here.”
Then glancing from side to side, Karpukhin asked softly, “Can you get a hold of a Bible?  When I was a child, I held a Bible in my hands but I never read it.  Who knows how long I have left to live.  I’m an old man now and whenever I lay down to sleep, I begin thinking about God.”
Karpukhin stood near my workbench and unloaded hoses and tubes.  He kept talking to me. Karpukhin had expressed my thoughts.  Somehow, we had to get a Bible.

The next evening, I went to the thirteenth division.  When I arrived, I asked for Valik.  They led me to him.  Valik was writing a letter and Zhenya was lying on the bunk drawing.  He was not a bad artist.  Zhenya saw me first. “Hey, Valik, Boris is here. Get something for us.”
Valik stood up, filling the whole passageway between the bunks with his huge body.  He smiled.  Then he shouted, “Hey, gopher, come here.  Go tell the privileged folks that I have a guest today. I need some tea and candy.  Tell them to send some cookies too!  They gather up enough tribute from the men that they always have enough.  If it’s not on my table within fifteen minutes, I’ll come and knock out their brains.”
Zhenya nodded at Valik proudly.  “I trained him myself,” he told me.  “When he first arrived here, he was nice, soft-spoken.  Now he knows how to treat the privileged folks.”
To my surprise, the gopher returned fifteen minutes later carrying everything Vadik had demanded.  He brought back two cans of fish in addition.  Valik stood up and called someone.  Two men came running.  He ordered one man to boil tea and the other man to keep a look out for dubaks and to warn him if any came in sight.  He was protecting me.  Visiting another division was against regulations.
We sat drinking our tea.  Valik and Zhenya asked me how I ended up in the punishment brigade.  Valik sat and listened, then said, ‘If that Gypsy Yurchenko says anything to you, if he doesn’t move you to the second level of rations, I’ll have a little talk with him.  He knows how I talk.”
“Valik,” I explained.  “Yurchenko isn’t acting on his own.  I’m on the KGB list and the KGB tell the camp administrators how to treat me. If you try doing something to help me, you will only get a second term and nothing will change.  Please don’t touch Yurchinko.  Don’t get involved.  You can’t overcome evil with evil.”
Valik agreed, saying, “Sure, I know you can’t punch in everybody’s face.  You’re right about a second term but no matter what the administration orders, a brigade leader can always find a way around it.  The bell rang, signaling all clear for the ten o’ clock bedtime.  I stood up to go, but Valik and Zhenya stopped me. “Don’t worry,” they assured me. “The donkeys are on guard.”  ‘Donkeys’ were prison servants.  Prisoners themselves, they willingly served any prisoner, who could protect them from the tyranny of the brigade leaders, directors, and supervisors. Valik and Zhenya had many donkeys, who were ready to do any favor in return for protection. 
Although I had to go to work in two hours, I stayed on.  We continued drinking tea and talking.  The thirteenth division’s brigade leader was sleeping across from us on the other side of the passageway.  He was snoring like a steam engine.  Valik stood up, took dirty rags from someone’s boots, walked up to the brigade leader’s bunk, and covered the man’s face with the rags.  The brigade leader mumbled something in his sleep, grunted, and then suddenly jumped up.  When he saw Valik, he apologized for his snoring.
I sensed that Valik was enjoying himself.  He liked irritating the people, who bullied the prisoners.  Playing the role of Robin Hood, he stood up to the bullies, who only understood and respected physical might.  He was a very powerful man! When he was showing off, he could break apart a nylon cord as thick as a small finger.  Out of curiosity, the dubaks brought him horseshoes, which he twisted into the shape of propellers with his bare hands.
“You should be working in a circus,” the dubaks told Valik.
“This is a circus here,” answered Valik.
Neither Zhenya nor Valik were interested in religion.  All they wanted to talk about was whether I had met Sakharov.  They wanted to know if he was a Russian or a Jew.  Zhenya said that his mother was Jewish and that he was very interested in Jewish history.  As for Valik, he was interested in everything.  

    

Chapter 32
Mutiny

Within a short time, all the supervisors in the punishment brigade had stopped working.  They had only worked a little for show, to calm things down, or just in case the prosecutor showed up.  Valik did not take my advice.  He went up to Yurchenko and talked to him about me.  Yurchenko was afraid of Valik and made no objection but later, he came up to Zheny and told him, “Your buffalo better mind his own business.  He may be very strong today but tomorrow he could lose that strength.  You know how it goes.  If you don’t stop, you’ll both be working in my punishment brigade.  Syutkin won’t allow anyone to offend me.”
“Why don’t you tell Valik this yourself,” responded Zhenya.  “Are you afraid?”
Yurchenko did not answer.  He turned around and walked away.
	That evening, while we were drinking tea, Zhenya told me about his conversation with Yurchenko.  Valik listened to everything silently, said nothing, and then walked out of the barracks.  A minute later, Zhenya jumped up from the bunk, “Valik probably went to beat up the Gypsy.  We’ve got to get to your barracks fast.”
We did not see how it began but when we got there, Valik was slowly advancing on the Gypsy.  Yurchenko, his fists raised to protect his head, was retreating backward and shouting, “Vanka come help me!”  Then he began calling for all of his supervisors by name.  Seeing what was happening, they came sneaking up on Valik from the side and from behind but Vanka-the Hohol flew at Valik straight on.  Vanka was the same age as Valik but half a head taller.  He was strong too.  Without slowing his pace, Vanka went straight for Valik and tried to land a blow but Valik intercepted his huge fist just before it reached his face.  Then Valik delivered a short, strong jab and the Hohol immediately fell to the floor.  The Gypsy continued to retreat but Valik stepped over Vanka and moved toward him.  Zhenya and I stopped Valik but he broke free, grabbed a wooden stool, lifted it with his left hand, and broke it with one frightening blow of his right hand.  Then he threw the stool at Yurchenko’s feet and shouted, “That’s what’s in store for you!”
Valik turned around and walked out of the barracks.  By this time, Vanka-the Hohol had gotten up but he just stood there reeling and swearing.  The whole brigade saw what happened.  Everyone had seen that Yurchenko was not invincible.
Zhenya and I had a long talk with Valik.  “Valik,” I said, trying to convince him, “I asked you not to get involved with Yurchenko because of me.  You’ll only get your sentence increased and won’t accomplish a thing.  I don’t want you to suffer because of me.  You already have four years ahead of you.  I can handle Yurchenko and the Hohol by myself.  I know the KGB is just waiting for the moment I start defending myself with my fists.”
The next day, Valik was sent to solitary confinement for fifteen days.  He committed some other infraction there and was held for another fifteen days.
After the incident, when Valik was safely confined in solitary, Yurchenko felt protected by KGB Operations once more.  He and his supervisors began beating the prisoners again but they did not touch me.  After each beating, the prisoners began writing complaints to the prosecutor. They asked me to write letters in witness.  The administration did not react to the complaints but the prisoners in our brigade became more daring each day.  When they were beaten, they stopped their machines and refused to work.  It was beginning to look like mutiny.  The supervisors spent the whole shift running around the workshop with their clubs trying to beat out the quota.
Then one of the prisoners found out that another punishment brigade was doing thirty percent less work than we were.  He began making fewer hoses than before.  The brigade leader ordered his supervisors to follow him when he went to the lavatory.  When he did leave for the lavatory, his co-worker noticed the supervisors and brigade leader following him.  Realizing that there was something wrong, the co-worker went to the lavatory too but the lavatory door was locked.  He could hear them beating up his friend so he ran back to the workshop and shouted, “Brother, the Gypsy and his mob are beating up Roman!”
Everyone ran to the lavatory.  Six men had never before ganged up on one man and this act broke the prisoners’ patience. The crowd of prisoners immediately broke down the locked doors and rushed into the lavatory.  The narrow passageway put the prisoners at a disadvantage and the brigade leader was able to hide behind his supervisors and shout, “Kill that herd of cattle! Get them back in their stalls! Sergey, break through and call the dubaks!”
Everyone was swearing.  Vanka-the Hohol and the other supervisor, Tank, stood in the passageway swinging their fists.  As the crowd of prisoners was pushed back, they flooded back into the workshop. The supervisors felt encouraged and moved back into the workshop, too.  That was their mistake!  They lost their advantage.  Nikolaev ran to the table, grabbed a piece of cord, and began circling Vanka-the Hohol.  Vanka held up his fists and lashed out on all sides like an animal.  Nikolaev waited for the right moment like a cat, then sprang at Vanka’s back, and quickly slipped the noose around Vanka’s neck.  The fact that Vanka had beaten Nikolaev many times with the same kind of cord had instilled a deep hatred in him, which now filled him with strength and determination. Nikolaev held the noose tight and Vanka began choking, turning blue, and gasping helplessly.  Another prisoner mercilessly rammed the end of a thick tube into his stomach.  Vanka fell to the floor but Nikolaev pulled the noose tighter.
Nearby, the prisoners were kicking ‘Tank’ with their feet.  Felled by a blow to the head with a tube, he was covered in blood.  The brigade leader and his remaining supervisors tried running away but one of the prisoners threw a tube like a spear and hit one of the supervisors just as he reached the workshop exit.  The prisoners caught the other supervisors at the workshop exit and beat them without mercy.  They beat the brigade leader especially cruelly and would have killed him had it not been for Kharpuhin and his wide experience.  He found a way to stop the battle. As loud as he could, he shouted, “Brothers, the cops are coming!”
In reality, the dubaks appeared from out of nowhere.  Then came the soldiers.  They brought the badly beaten Yurchenko and his supervisors to the hospital.
The next day before work, Syutkin had a talk with the brigade.  “You should have told me Yurchenko was bullying you,” he told us.  “We would have removed him.  We never assigned the brigade that quota.  Yurchenko thought that up himself.  The administration had nothing to do with it.”
Everyone understood that KGB Operation had decided to make Yurchenko the scapegoat.  He had done everything on their orders but now the KGB was pretending not to have known anything.
‘I’m going to forgive you this time,” continued Syutkin, “but if there’s any more fighting, I’ll press criminal charges.  Three of you will be spending fifteen day in solitary confinement.  We know how this all got started.  Perchatkin worked badly, did not fulfill his quota, wrote letters all the time, and taught you how.  Then you all began writing letters too.  You stopped working.  Roman was the most insolent of all.  He began setting his own quota.  Nikolaev started the fight.  He did such a good job on the Hohol that we had a hard time waking him up in the hospital. These three men are to accompany me to headquarters immediately.  They already have orders for fifteen days in solitary.  The rest of you will fulfill their quotas for them.”
The brigade began grumbling. “Why blame Perchatkin?” they asked. “The brigade leader and his supervisors started the fight.  Perchatkin didn’t even fight.  Six supervisors beat up Roman, so why is he being sent to solitary?” 
Nikolaev joined in. “The Hohol beat me up almost every shift and never got sent to solitary.  You put those bulls on our backs and made us fulfill their quotas.  They beat us and stole our food in the mess hall.”
One of the other prisoners exclaimed, “Too many people have been crippled at these machines.  Too many people have hung themselves because of those monsters.”  Yet another prisoner in the crowd shouted, “The court sentenced us to lose our freedom but not to starvation and mockery.”
“Shut up!” shouted Syutkin.  “What is this? Mutiny?  You’ve gotten real talkative recently.  If you say another word, I’ll call the soldiers.  Six supervisors were no match for you.  I’ll put a soldier with a club beside each one of you.”
We were taken to headquarters and then to solitary.  It was unbearably cold again, first a regular day, and then a ‘skip’ day.  With the bunk locked up on the wall, I had to stand on my feet from six o’clock in the morning until ten o’clock at night.  Time dragged on. I paced around, crouched down, did exercises, and tried to keep warm.  I counted the days until Valik would get out of solitary.  I thought about him and Zhenya.  It had been interesting being with them.  Both of them were inquisitive and there had always been something to talk about.  I thought about my family.  I counted how many days until my release.  Fifteen days passed this way.
After they took me out of solitary, they led me along the passageway of barbed wire. I saw Zhenya and Valik at the entrance.  They were waiting for me.  “The brigade has a day off today,” announced Zhenya.  “Now we have two or three days off every month.  We’re going to the sauna.  There’s a bathhouse for the supervisors and the privileged folks.  Valik and I agreed to go to the sauna.  Even though we don’t associate with the privileged folks, they consider us part of their group.”
Valik began talking to me too.  “Boy, do we have something to show you!”  Zhenya stopped him immediately saying,  “Don’t tell him yet.  Let him see for himself!”
We came to the sauna, which turned out to be a room where they used to steam flea-infested prison mattresses and clothing.  Now the steam room had been turned into a sauna, replete with several wooden stools.  It was very pleasant to get warm after spending fifteen days in the cold.
“Donkey!” shouted Valik, “Bring us some tea.  Hurry up!”	
“I’m coming. I’m coming,” answered someone from the other side of the door.   The voice sounded familiar.  When the door opened, I could not believe my eyes.
Yurchenko walked in carrying tea and cookies.
“Good man!” said Valik.  “Now clean our boots while we drink our tea!”
Yurchenko nodded his head silently and walked out.  I believed and yet did not believe what I saw.  Our former brigade leader, the man trusted by KGB Operations, was now a ‘donkey’ serving Valik and Zhenya.  He had become just another worker in the thirteenth division.  He had done the KGB’s bidding for a long time but now he was no longer needed.  They had used him and then betrayed him.  It did prove one thing.  The KGB did not make all the decisions.  The almighty fist carried its own weight.

Chapter 33
Not by Bread Alone

Soon almost everyone in camp knew me by sight.  It was hard to find a moment alone.  On my days off, I strolled around the camp yard and was usually surrounded by curious prisoners.  Everyone was interested in different things but I always tied to turn the discussion to religion and morals.  The topic of Christian morality annoyed many of the prisoners.  All they could see around them was the victory of evil and the triumph of brute strength.
Once, when a group of us was walking past the mess hall, we noticed about twenty exceedingly thin prisoners, dressed in tattered clothing, standing at the garbage pit behind the mess hall.  Some of them had boots that were almost completely fallen apart.  These people were the ‘pigs,’ the prisoners who were unable to endure the monstrous labor camp system.  They had no physical strength, no strength of will, no human dignity, and no friends to help them.  They let the other prisoners steal their clothing and food.  They gathered around the garbage pit waiting expectantly for the cooks to throw out potato peels.
  I stopped to watch and the people with me stopped too.  The ‘pigs’ were pacing around the yard of the mess hall.  Every now and then, one of them picked up something, smelled it, took a little taste, and sometimes ate all of it right away.  My first impression was painful but the most important was yet to come.  
The cook’s helper appeared at the door carrying buckets.  Several other people came out the door behind him.  “Piggy, piggy, piggy,” cried the cook’s helper.  
Exhausted, living at the level of animals, the ‘pigs’ rushed forward in response to the call.  When they were all gathered in a tight group, one of the people standing by the cooks’ helper threw a loaf of bread to the ‘pigs.’  It disappeared immediately in the tangle of human bodies.  When another loaf of bread was thrown, everyone began fighting to get the biggest piece.  At the same time, the cook’s helper swung the bucket and poured dirty water over the poor people but the fight for possession of the bread did not lessen.  Then the cook’s helper threw a sack of potato peeling in the wash box and the starving people rushed to the box and began grabbing the peelings.  Some of the people ate the raw peelings immediately, right there on the spot, but other people stuffed the peelings into their pockets and walked away.  The cook’s helper and the people with him kept laughing.
“How can your Christian morality change this?” asked Mamedov, a Muslim from the Caucuses, a very just man.  In freedom, Mamedov had been a Judo instructor.  He had been imprisoned for being the middleman in a speculation deal and had a two-year sentence.  “We Moslems,” he explained, “decide the matter this way…”
He walked up to the cook’s helper and gave him a hard punch in the face.  The cook’s helper remained on his feet and retaliated by hitting Mamedov on the shoulder with the empty bucket.  The other mess hall workers immediately joined the fight against Mamedov.
“Let’s see if Allah helps Mamedov,” said Valik.
“”We’ve got to separate them, I responded and headed for the fight.  Valik ran ahead of me and dispersed the crowd with a few kicks.  Then he grabbed the cook’s helper by the chin and pulled it close to his own.  Then Valik firmly, ominously gave him an order: “You climb into the box and eat the potato peels yourself, you scumbag.”
At the same time, Madedov took a flying leap at the cook’s helper and hit him on the ear.  This move inspired Valik even more.  He struck the cook’s helper on the head with his sledge hammer fists.  The cook’s helper fell to his knees.  Then Zhenya and I pulled Valik and Mamedov away from the mess hall yard.  As we continued our walk around the labor camp yard, Valik continued to justify himself saying that never in his life had he hit anyone without a good reason.  

Soon, we were able to get hold of a Bible.  Zina came to Sverdlosk and made contact with the unregistered Baptists.  They were able to bribe a dubak, who slipped me some food and a Bible.  I received two more Bibles and some more food through the same dubak.  The dubak was very frightened because I was on the KGB list, but the Sverlosk Baptists paid him very well.
My Bible was confiscated two times during searches.  Each time, I was given fifteen days in solitary.  Zhenya and Valik had time to read the Bibles before they were confiscated.  Their memories were so good, they literally soaked it up.  We decided to find a secret place in the library for the third Bible.  Sergey Gelik, a former officer and now the librarian, offered to protect the Bible himself. There were so many people wanting to read it that they had to take turns.  Sergey was in charge.  While one person read the Bible, several other people kept a lookout for the dubaks.  If a dubak came into the library, Sergey immediately took the Bible and hid it.
Two months later, someone informed the guards about the Bible reading going on in the library.  One time, after work, when we were sitting in the library and talking while Mamedov read the Bible, one of the people on watch shouted, “Brothers, the dubaks are coming!”
Sergey disappeared with the Bible and the rest of us glued our eyes on the books we had prepared earlier.  The dubaks burst into the library shouting, “Everyone, stay in your place! Don’t move!”
The dubaks turned the whole library upside down but they did not find the Bible. Up until the time I was released, we studied the Bible in safety.  Perhaps, it is still there in the library freeing imprisoned souls through the legacy of its redeeming truth.

Life in camp continued its course: hard labor in return for a bowl of ‘slop, disturbed sleep, and rumors of suicides. Then, about two months before my release, I was running to the wash basin along with the rest of the punishment brigade.  There was some kind of disturbance at the wash room entrance, near the toilets.  The prisoners were coming back into the barracks one by one.
  I ran up to the door and saw that everyone was stepping over a person lying on the dirty, cement floor.  He was gasping and white froth was coming out of his mouth but no one was paying any attention to him.  His fingers were moving.  He was alive and seemed to be crying out for help.  I had already seen so much in camp but I was still shocked by the prisoners’ indifference.  When I asked the other prisoners what was wrong with the man and if he had been lying there long, no one answered.  No one was interested.  Then the old man, Karpukhin, ran up.  “What’s wrong with him?” he asked.
“I’ve been trying to find out but no one knows.”
“Stay with him while I go get help from the hospital,” I told Karpukhin.
“Okay, but let’s get him out into the corridor or he’ll get trampled.”
Everyone was rushing to wash up and get to the mess hall.  They were all afraid to miss out on the ‘slop.’ A dying man did not concern them at all.
We dragged the dying man out into the corridor. ‘I’ve lived to see too much,” lamented Karpukhin. “People! People!”  His tears fell on the dying man.
I returned with two orderlies, who took the poor man to the hospital.  Kharpukhin and I visited him in the hospital the next day.  The man was lying there, all yellow, his nose sharply protruding.  His eyes were closed.
“Maybe he’s sleeping,” said Karpukhin.
“No, I’m not sleeping,” he answered quietly, not opening his eyes.
“Can we talk to you.  We’re the ones who called the orderlies.  You wouldn’t have made it otherwise,” explained Kharpukhin. 
“So what?  Who asked you?”  Kharpukhin and I looked at each other knowing that it had been a suicide attempt.
Without opening his eyes, the man continued.  “I was afraid to hang myself because I’ve seen so many people after they’ve been cut down.  They look terrible after dying that way. I drank some kind of solution.  I’d be a free man if you hadn’t interfered.  Why live?  I don’t want to suffer here another seven years.  I don’t want to be threatened with fists and work for ‘slop.’  Even if I were released, nobody needs me.  No, I don’t need that kind of life.”
Little by little, he became hysterical and we had a hard time calming him down.  We promised to be his friends and to come and visit him.  We understood that he was alone, had no one to lean on, and we offered him our support.
  “Now we’re like your God-parents.  We won’t desert you when you’re in trouble,” said Kharpkhin.  The troubled man, Nikolai, smiled for the first time.

Chapter 34
The Final Tragedy before Release

By the time I was released, I had made many friends in camp.  On August 18, 1982, the day of my release, people gathered in our barracks from early morning on.  Everyone came up to me and shook my hand.  Some people, like Nikolai, thanked me for my help.  Other people wished me good luck.  The people from the library kidded me saying, “Too bad your term is over.”
When the camp P.A. system announced, “Citizen Perchatkin, report to the guardhouse,” I walked out of the barracks, leaving my new friends behind.  I did not look back but I could feel hundreds of eyes watching me.  As I crossed the labor camp yard, I noticed a tractor driving up from the work area.  It was pulling a trailer, loaded down with camp produce. I kept walking and passed by a prisoner, an old man about seventy years old. “I wonder why they’re still keeping him here?”  I wondered.
By this time, the tractor caught up to the old man and me.  The old man looked up at the sky indifferently and suddenly made a sharp turn, unusual for a man his age, and fell under the wheels of the heavy trailer.  I shouted something in surprise and despair but my cry was lost amid the screams of the dying man.  The tractor stopped immediately and the dubaks ran up.  “The old coot planned it so I wouldn’t be able to see,” exclaimed the tractor driver.  “He threw himself under the trailer.”  It was the last tragedy I saw in camp. It was the last cry.  
“Perchatkin! Hurry up!” shouted a dubak from the guard house. ‘Your mother is waiting for you at the gates.”
I went into the guardhouse with a heavy heart.  The dubak gave me the clothing my mother had brought for me.  I changed my clothes, received my documents.  Then Major Malinkovich came up to me and said, “I’ve been ordered to have a talk with you before you leave.  Come into my office.”
As usual he was vulgar and cynical, not like the other Jews I knew.  There are good-for-nothings in every nation and I met a few of them here in the labor camp.  
I stepped into Malinkovich’s office in the guardhouse. It was ordinary, plain, not like his office in the labor camp headquarters. This was the office he used for meetings with prisoners’ relatives and with various, public commissions.
“Well Perchatkin,” he began.  “I’ve been ordered to warn you to forget everything you’ve seen here, everything you’ve heard, and everything you’ve experienced.  If you speak or write about this camp, you won’t be able to prove a thing.  It will be considered slander and you’ll end up back here again.  You’ve had some experience now and know the punishment for slandering your native country.” 

After I left Malikovich’s office, I walked alone without guards.  I was already considered a free man.  I glanced out the second floor window and saw two prison trucks arriving and the people starting to climb out. The guards were herding in a new convoy of prisoners.  I stayed at the guardhouse window and watched the new arrivals as they moved through the labyrinth of barbed wire.  
I knew that a little time would pass and some of them would adjust and become  supervisors or brigade leaders.  Some of them would try to find justice and end up in the punishment brigade.  Others would wander around the garbage pits eating potato peels.  I knew that the guardhouse doors would never open for some of them.  One or another of them would be carried out on a cart drawn by harnessed men.  At the guardhouse, the guards would pierce their heels with steel rods, checking to see if they were just feigning death.  To be even surer, the guards would break their skulls with sharpened hammers.  For many of them, this would be the only route to freedom.  The guards would place a marker with a small crossbar over the graves.  If a mother were to come looking for her son, a wife looking for her husband, or children looking for their father, there would be no names, no dates, only numbers.  
I took a last look at the new convoy of prisoners.  They disappeared into the insatiable maw of the camp.    

 

      

      

EPILOGUE

After my release from Sverdlosk prison Camp #10, I found out that there were twenty-seven other believers still being detained in various prisons and labor camps.  The situation with believers had not improved.  In just one month, five believers, who had actively sought emigration for religious reasons, were murdered savagely. In Nahodka,  our neighbor’s son, Vanya Belousev, was killed.  He was burned with soldering irons while he was still alive.  I telephoned representatives of the USA and informed them about it all.    
My path of fire did not end either. Shortly after I returned to Nahodka, the KGB Assistant Director, a man named Perepechkin, summoned me to meet with him.  New to KGB headquarters, he looked like a human bull.  When we met, he spent the first few minutes staring into my eyes.  Then he reached out his hand to an open safe, took out a pistol, lammed the pistol butt on the table with all his might, and shouted,  “You scumbag! I promise you that you’ll be back where you came from within six months! The day will come when I’ll shoot you personally.”
Four months later, agent Klimov warned me to disappear for a while.  “Andropov has issued a secret order to arrest all dissidents and activists,” he told me.  “The regional KGB has your name on its list and they’ve decided to arrest you right after New Years.   You have to get out of the Primorsky Region.  You can’t trust anyone.  Two people from your church were just recruited as informers.  They are people close to you.  I’m not the one who recruited them so I don’t know their names.  Perepechkin recruited the woman.  She’s agent #93.  Captain Lysenko from KGB Operations recruited the man.  He’s agent #94.  I learned about it from reading Operation reports.”
Two months later, I was arrested in the woods.  The KGB had spent three days searching for me with helicopters.  Agent #93 had betrayed me.  I was sent back to the circles of hell again.  There were six months of prison in Komsomolsk-Amur, four months of which I spent on death row. Then I was sent to the Khabarovsk prison, then the Magadank prison.  Finally, I was sent to the Kolyma Labor Camp # 4 in the Uhtar settlement to serve out my second term.  It was cold there in the far North, where summers were only two months long.  I was again assigned to the punishment brigade and had to work twelve-hour shifts with no days off. I spent two and a half years there.
The punishment brigade was composed primarily of murders. At night, I had ‘Grandpa Sayid’ sleeping to my right.  He had been imprisoned for cannibalism.  To my left slept ‘Postman Pechkin,’ a murderer and thief, who entered peoples’ homes disguised as a postman.
In camp, I did have the opportunity to meet some interesting people.  I became acquainted with Arnold Yermenko, who was serving a term on trumped up charges of having “misappropriated” his own firewood.  Yermenko is now a member of the Russian Parliament. I also became acquainted with Mystafoi Dzhamilevim, an activist in the movement to return the Crimean Tartars to their homeland.  He served six terms for Statute 190.  Now he leads the government of the Crimean Tartars. I also met a Russian Orthodox priest, who was serving a term of imprisonment on trumped up charges for ‘fighting.’  The prisoners called him ‘Father Germagen.’ 
The whole time I was in prison, I did not receive a single letter.  I felt fully isolated.  I did not know how my family was getting one.  After my release, I found out that my family had not received a single letter from me, although I wrote to them regularly every month, as much as allowed.    
Three weeks before my release, a camp functionary read me a letter from my wife informing me that she and my mother had been scheduled for trial on the twenty-first of August.  The news was a terrible torture for me.  Although Perestroika had already begun, they were still being tried.  
I was released on August 27, 1986. 
In 1987, Klimov gave me a document detailing a five-year plan of action against Pentecostal, Baptist, and Adventist believers. I made a copy of this document and managed to get it to Richard Stephenson, the Second Secretary at the American Embassy in Moscow.  With the break up of the Soviet Union, the plan was not implemented.
Somewhat later, the American Congressional Commission on Human Rights asked me to submit a report on the situation of religious believers in the USSR.  I met with the Congressional Commission in Moscow.
Three months later, I received an invitation from Secretary of State, Mr. Schultz, to discuss the question of emigration of religious believers from the USSR.  A week later, at the behest of Secretary Schultz, I met with, and had discussion with, the Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Shifter.  
A month later, I was invited to confer with the United States Attorney General.  He explained that most of the difficulty was due to funding. By law, the United States was accepting refugees by nationality - Jews, political refugees, and dissidents.  There was no provision for religious refugees, which meant that Congress could not allocate money.  He told me the United States would temporarily accept believers on Jewish visas but that this could only continue a very short time because it would divert funds designated for Jewish refugees. He explained that we needed to convince Congress to pass legislation establishing a ‘religious refugee’ immigration status. 
 On May 30, 1987, I was invited to meet with Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States. The meeting continued for two hours.  President Reagan told me that I needed to tell the US Congress everything I had just told him. Later that evening, during the banquet, one of the President’s assistants came up to me and gave me an invitation to present a report to the US Congress for August 4, 1988.
The next day, KGB General Grinev came to my home and ‘advised’ me to get out of the Soviet Union within the next four months.  If I stayed any longer, he told me I would be arrested.
	On July 10th, I received an imigration visa to the USA. When I went to KGB headquarters to pick up my travel documents, I had to talk to KGB Assistant Chief Perepechkin.  “Don’t think you can escape us by immigrating to the United States,” he told me.  “We have our people there too!” He told me the truth.  Within a very short time, I was appalled to learn that Agent #93 had also immigrated to America.
	My family and I arrived at Kennedy International Airport in New York on July 26, 1988. On August 4, 1988, I presented my report to the United States Congress.  As I walked to the rostrum, I recalled the fiery path that had led me here. I had endured many difficulties - dangerous trips, meetings with diplomats, transmitting documents, searches, arrests, escapes, prisons, labor camps, torture, hunger, and murderous work in the labor camp brigades.  Had I not gone through all these difficulties, I would not be here reporting to Congress.  Throughout the whole Soviet era, God had guided his people.  He had guided my family and me.  Now, as I stood ready to speak, I prayed that God would provide the way to lead us out from Russia.   
	Two months later, Congress voted to establish refugee status for Russian Pentecostals and to allocate funds.  The status of “religious refugee” was later extended to include Russian Baptists, Adventists, and Catholics.

	By the end of 1988, about five thousand Russian and Ukrainian believers had been granted refugee status and had immigrated to America.  From 1988 to 1998, more than 350,000 Russian and Ukrainian Pentecostal, Baptist, Adventist, and Catholic believers had left the former Soviet Union and settled in America.