O.V. Afanasov
Irkutsk State University
Unlike the Gorlag, Pechlag, Steplag and other special camps, the prisoners of the Oserlag did not carry out any extensive protest actions after Stalin’s death – maybe this was due to the remoteness of this camp and the scattered location of its separate sub-sectors along the railroad track Taishet – Lena; another reason might be the low occupancy (500-1000 individuals). Nonetheless, the events which took place in the camps of Norilsk, Vorkuta and Kengir met with a certain response from the part of the inmates of the Oserlag.
In the course of the year 1954 trains arrived at the Oserlag with prisoners, who had participated in camp revolts at that time. In the spring of 1954 450 „activists“ from the Rechniy and Gorniy Camps, who had “taken part in actions of mass disobedience against the administration” were transferred from Vladimirsk prison to the Oserlag1. According to testimony given by G.S. Klimovich, who also arrived by this train, they were immediately put under a strict penitentiary regime and permanent and permanent watch from the part of the camp administration. A short time after their arrival at the 5th camp sub-sector of the Oserlag, the camp commander, Colonel Yevstigneev and his suite asked to meet these people personally and then decide, how they should handle and treat them in the future. The newly arrived party of prisoners immediately claimed the implementation of the GULAG instructions about the introduction of a common camp regime in all camp sub-sectors, whereupon the camp administration of the Oserlag acted according to the prevailing paradigm - 70 individuals were taken to the prison in Irkutsk, where they had an intensified penitentiary regime, about 200 prisoners were confined in an isolator for a period of 3 months; “the entirely emaciated inmates were then released and all of them taken to camp sub-sector N° 307 (a separate forced labor camp sub-sector with strict regime. – O.A.)”2.
The camp administration also “gave its best attention” to later arriving detained participants of camp revolts, among them many women. The female Polish Oserlag prisoner G. Lipinskaja recalled that in July 1954 a total of 16 girls from the Steplag arrived; they were taken to a separate barrack under intensified custody and then locked up for two days. After this period, however, they were immediately assigned to brigades and forced to march off to work 3.
Indeed, not all prisoners who arrived in the Oserlag had the intention to go to work. Some inmates, whose mind and preparedness to offer resistence was neither broken by the cruel abatement of the revolts, nor the subsequent institution of legal proceedings, interrogations and iron prison regime, continued to oppose instructions of the Oserlag camp administration, as well. During his speeach on the occasion of a meeting of the party active (22 –23 December 1954) the chief of the Oserlag, Colonel Yevstigneev announced, that at the 3rd camp sub-sector (settlement of Ansebi, Bratsk District. – O.A.) „those prisoners, who were being kept under an intensified regime, had been refusing to go to work for a long time, behaved themselves in an utterly impertinent manner .... The vast majority of these inmates acted as participants during the mass idlings in Norilsk and Workuta, too; some of them have already beenkept under strict conditions of confinement ... Those who behaved worst had better be eliminated; it would certainly be reasonable to issue all necessary official documents and then put the unmanageable prisoners under a strict, intensified regime; they remaining insurgents must undergo an intensified, qualified education process“4.
Spivak, the head of the 3rd camp sub sector was of the same opinion. In his speech he said: „In our section there are cases of refusal to work and violations of the camp regime from the part of the prisoners. We have a great number of inmates from the Norillag, Steplag and others, who actively participated in go-slow strikes. 120 of them do not go to work at all, but are intensely engaged within camp sub-sector N° 307 in counterrevolutionary activities; apart from this they try to threaten the representatives of the camp administration. ... 20-25% of these priosners could be officially transferred to prison regime.“5. In all, the number of Oserlag in mates refusing to go to work between August and November 1954 more than quadrupeled during the period of „maximum activity of the worst part of prisoners“, summing up 60 individuals on average per day. In September the number increased to 207, in October it slightly decreased to 197, in November increased again to 2656.
In order to demonstrate their resistence against the Oserlag camp administration the participants of the revolt applied more active variants of protest, as well – hence, they organized malicious arson to industrial objects and incited other prisoners to take part in mass disobedience – partly by means of forced methods. As the head of the regional administration of internal affairs, Doshlov, mentioned on the session of the Oserlag party active, a group of inmates from among the Norilsk contingent was transferred to the 19th camp sub-sector (it served the Chunsk wood-processing combine – O.A.); they had hardly arrived in the camp, when they already began to terrorize earnestly working prisoners, batter them and instigate them to disobey the instructions of the camp administration. “7. By the way, the territory of this very wood-processing combine was subject to a fire attack in November 1954: blazes, in which the authorities incriminated “Ukrainian nationalists” and other “hostile inmates” were set on two industrial objects; 8. Mass disobedience was also organized in camp sub-sector N° 043, and in January 1955 the entire “contingent” of the 6th forced labor camp sub-sector, which served the brickworks,refused to go to work for two days in all9.
Approximately at that time there was an action of resistance in the 2nd camp sub-sector (Central Hospital N° 1, as well. P.I. Nabokov, eye-witness of these events, recalled: „We hear reports on long-lasting mass hunger strikes in camp sub-sectors N° 307, 308 and other remote Oserlag sub-sectors. In ou sub-sector, the 2nd, Ukrainian prisoners have taken the entire command. They preserved their former partisan methods. We, the Moscovitans, do all the simple work. In the morning, when the guards form up, I go to sleep. All of a sudden the compound is filled shootings from an automatic gun, noises and clamour. Guardians and informaers are running to the guard-house ... We are sitting in our barracks; it is better not to lean out of the window, otherwise they will see us from their watch-towers. They fire at eachother. We look out of the window and recognize some brave bloke going to the direction of the guard-house with a white flag in his hands. „We stipulate justice and the riewing of all our cases and legal proceedings of the repressed; we stipulate that representatives of the Central Committee and the public prosecutors come her!” The receive the reply by megaphone: “And, maybe, you also stipulate the Pope to come to this place from Rome?“ – Well, and then, of course, their usual vocabulary. The guards on the towers try their best to show power. They start shooting again. This is now the second day that we find ourselves in a state of siege. The guards keep silent. ... Support from the neighbouring forced labour camp sub-sectors cannot be expected, the telephone line is disconnected. The beam of the projectors is illuminating the compound. The shooters are positioned. Finally, three days later, some high-ranking executives arrived, dressed like generals. They showed us various documents, reprimanded us, promised all sorts of things and tried to convince us. But they did not fulfill their tasks. The guards returned to the compound…. Nobody was penalized after these incidents“10.
The disobedience of prisoners in the differnet Oserlag camp sub-sectors continued till the year 1956 hin, when, due to an amnesty and the work of a Commission of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, they started a campaign of mass releases of prisoners. In a statement of the political department for the first half year of 1956 it is said that „many prisoners detained in camp sub-sector N° 307 with an intensified regime for having committed counter-revolutionary crimes, systematically refuse to go to work and sabotage measures and instructions of the camp administration and the political department. Early this a mass hunger strike took place on this compound. Upon the arrival of a commission of the Supreme Court, however, the mood of the inmates changed abruptly; they decided to go to work again and common discipline stabilized“11.
Admittedly, not all particpants of the camp revolts fell in the category of those who were amnestied or were subject to prior release; the most active among them remained inmates of the Oserlag for several years. In accordance with a directive “About indispensible political education to be carried out among those convicted of extraordinarily dangerous crimes againt the State“ 56 individuals of the camp sub-sector N° 4-42 “A”(with special intensified regime), mainly so-called inmates “with authority” and “Organizers of mass disobedience” in Vorkuta, Norilsk and Magadan were transferred to other special camps in January 196012. In the course of the following year, in 1961, all prisoners of the Oserlag corrective labour camp, who had been convicted of having committed „counter-revolutionary crimes, were transferred to other detention camps outside the Irkutsk Region.
It has yet to be clarified to which regions and places of detention the remaining participants of mass disobedience were transferred from the Oserlag corrective labour camp; the fate of numerous people from this group who were released during this time is not known to us, either. We are also in lack of informition about the total number of prisoner transports, the number and make-up of inmates, who were involved and took an active part in the camp revolts and arrived in the Oserlag in the middle of the 1950s. Nonetheless, we may definitely say that the arrival of prisoners of this category in the Oserlag left remarkable traces in the history of this camp. The appearace of unshaken, unbroken human beings in the sub-sectors of the Oserlag, who, in brave fignht, nevertheless managed to save their lives and minds from dooming, developed the feeling of self-confidence with the rest of the inmates and led to an active social protest of Oserlag prisoners in the given period.
Annotations:
1 Documentation Center of modern History of the Irkustk Region (further
DCMHIR), Fond 5342, Inv. 1, File 287, Sheet 4; Oserlag: as it was. – Irkutsk,
1992. – p. 20.
2 Oserlag; as it was. – p. 20, 22.
3 G. Lipinska. When I recall. – Paris, 1988. – p. 72.
4 DCMHIR, Fond 5342, Inv. 1, File 284, Sheet 7.
5 Ibidem, sheet 31.
6 Ibidem, sheet 6.
7 Ibdem, sheet 38.
8 Ibidem, file 289, sheet 6; file 284, sheet 6.
9 Ibidem.
10 P.I. Nabokov. From handwritten memoirs// Resistence in the GULAG. – Moscow,
1992. – p. 217.
11 DCMHIR, Fond 5342, Inv.. 1, File 435, Sheet 6.
12 Ibidem, File 638, sheet 44.
Informations abour the author
Oleg Vladimirovich Afanasov – aspirant of the chair of modern history of our
country with the Faculty of History (Irkutsk State University).
E-mail: mimo@hist.isu.ru
Unknown publication.