Imagine that a servant of the regime has just knocked on your door asking for immediate interrogation. You know what it means. If you want to have any chance of surviving arrest, trial and exile to a labor camp, better read our guide. Before the enkawudziści will confiscate it from you.
First of all, take good, strong shoes, warm underwear, decent clothes and a coat or fur coat is obligatory. You probably won't come back here - you've just become a meaningless cog in the Gulag machine. 
If not one but several sad gentlemen have come and want to take you immediately, do not resist. If you are beaten up at the outset, it will be hard to survive later interrogations. After all, as the Soviet apparatchiks used to say:
You what, don't know yet? There is a secret order from comrade Stalin, if f ... .. he does not admit it, one has to beat, beat, beat ... (quoted after:M. Jakowienko "The wife of the NKVD. Confession of Agnessa Mironowa")
A very important thing! Under no circumstances should you upset the labor camp guards. They are the lesser gods here, standing in the pantheon next to the most powerful god, the warden of the prison.
Don't be the monkey in red
They can be irritated by everything that Agness Mironov found out - the heroine of the book "I Was the Wife of an NKVD", and at the same time a "red princess" who fell to the very bottom. From the fairy-tale palaces of Stalin's tops, she ended up in prison in Lubyanka.
She wore a red wool blouse there, not realizing the fact that it might enrage the guardian . She learned about it painfully in the middle of the night:
The enraged guardian has come to me. He yells:"Ah you, such a thing to sleep in in red clothes! It gets on my nerves! ”. And yes. I had to take my blouse off. And you know why it got on her nerves? Because red is the color of blood, and she made sure that no one would do anything to herself through her peephole.
Victims of labor camps and hunger. This is how the Polish pre-war press presented the visitors from the USSR.
There is blood on a different background, and on red no. Or maybe it was so - she looked through the peephole, saw a bright red stain, and at first she was gripped by fear, it seemed to her that it was blood. All in blood! (quoted after:M. Jakowienko "The wife of the NKVD. Confession of Agnessa Mironowa")
Watch out for layouts and puzzles
Once you are in the camp, you need to position yourself well. The truth about the humble calf that two mothers suckles you can immediately throw between fairy tales. The absolute best job is the one in the kitchen.
In the labor camp, next to the frost, the greatest enemy of the prisoners is hunger. It takes away strength, beauty and health . Hunger destroys the psyche and weakens the will, and whoever works in the kitchen does not go hungry. Likewise, the one who distributes the food.
You don't know how to do it? Take it easy, the rest of the staff will train you:
My predecessor Tamara taught me:"If you pour milk, pour a little less, you will have more for yourself." I tried to do that, but you don't realize how they look when they are poured! (quoted after:M. Jakowienko "I was the wife of an NKVD. Confession of Agnessa Mironowa")
Remember:milk can kill
There is one thing you must remember when working in such a lucrative position. Layouts and puzzles can be deadly . Be careful who you mess with, especially if that person is high in the camp hierarchy or sleeping with someone high in the camp. This is exactly what Agnessa Mironov got involved in.
When I came there and my predecessor gave me her "farm", this Kława addressed her next to me:"Aunt Tamara, is there something left for me to eat?" . And Tamara gave her milk. (quoted after:M. Jakowienko "The wife of the NKVD. Confession of Agnessa Mironowa")
Prisoners of labor camps. They had to cope with hunger, cold and bad conditions. Many of them did not survive.
When Agnessa replaced Tamara, Kława came to her. The woman, however, left her nothing to eat, having no heart to deceive the rest. This honesty almost cost Mironowa her life. Kława intervened and Agnessa not only quickly lost her job, but was also transferred to another camp. Milk in the labor camp could kill.
Take care of your fur
Mironowa found herself in another outpost of the "GULAG archipelago" ( about the Gulag, read more in another article! ). She had to rebuild her position and secure her existence. She started trading. From the very beginning, she was accompanied in the labor camp with squirrel fur, which she did not abandon in summer or winter, guarding like an eye in her head.
Though it was moldy and possibly lousy, it allowed her to survive when the temperature was around minus 50 degrees.
Fur, in addition to protection against the cold, provided material (pink, silky pillowcase) for the production of items for trade. Pulling threads from her clothes and cutting the pillowcase, Agnessa sewed and embroidered needle cushions.
Keep walking
For these small manifestations of "luxury" in the labor camp's everyday life, she managed to get the most necessary things. Enamel pot, a bit of millet. These two things obtained by exchanging things were enough to feel the long-forgotten weight of satiety in the stomach and regain a little strength.
The murderous marches in the freezing cold of Siberia were one of the causes of the deaths of the prisoners. Those who did not have the strength to wade in the snow stayed and froze. The camp system was ruthless.
When it turned out that the prisoners were to continue their journey in the worsening weather, this measure of millet was crucial for Mironowa. She gave her enough strength to survive the exhausting march. Many people were not so lucky:
There was a tall, beautiful Polish woman among us. She left four children at large. She was dressed only in woolen trousers and a barefoot jacket, and she had exchanged all her clothes for bread.
The cotton wool pads got soaked completely and then froze. She was walking not far from me. I saw her fall (quoted after:M. Jakowienko "I was the wife of an NKVD. Confession of Agnessa Mironowa").
Whoever fell, had no chance of rising. Few found enough empathy to help. Everyone saved their energy just to get to the end. The frozen body of a Polish woman was found and brought in by sleigh the next day. In the Siberian frost, minutes were enough to kill her.
Show no mercy to the sheep
One of the inherent elements of the camp's odyssey, not only during World War II, was hunger. Continuous, impossible to jam, let alone fight hunger. It cannot be overcome with good attitude and pride. Mironova was lucky enough to find her way to a labor camp specialized in food production - huge farms situated in the steppes. Sheep were bred there and crops were grown to feed them.
In addition to hard work with hay and harvesting, grooming the animals and producing cheese from their milk, prisoners in labor camps traveled to so-called summer houses (the dream of every inmate).
All summer a group of lucky people lived in the steppe with the herd of sheep they tended. They could revive on the spot. Although they were delivered bread every few days, they did not complain of hunger. They drank sheep's milk illegally and killed sheep for meat. The latter required teamwork and cleverness.
Camp hospital in Vorkuta. Mironowa, who had studied medicine for a while before being arrested, worked in a similar facility. Due to the lack of any medical supplies and forced labor, the camp hospitals were ordinary deaths.
When they killed an animal, they had to deal with it very quickly. For one night they trimmed them, cooked them and ate as much as they could. The rest they took to the steppe, scattered in the bushes, splashed the place with blood, and in the event of an inspection stubbornly insisted that the dead sheep were the work of wolves. These runs allowed them to gather strength and survive another hard winter.
Don't agree to an abortion in a labor camp
Finally, something for people with strong nerves. Good advice is given by Agnessa Mironova, who got into a forbidden affair while serving her sentence in a labor camp and fell into an unwanted pregnancy. Do not give in to short moments of passion or they can end tragically.
The interior of one of the camp barracks is decorated with a wall newspaper in honor of Stalin and other Soviet heroes. Every day the prisoners had to look at the portraits of people who led them to the camp.
Fearing the reprisals that would befall her in the camp and her husband's reaction, Mironov decided to terminate the pregnancy. The abortion was to be performed by ... the child's father, who was a camp doctor. Let's vote Agnessie:
Oh yeah - there are no instruments, so what should I do? Please imagine this situation. Night. Darkness. Only a candle is lit in the cell, the flame is uneven, shadows are dancing on the walls. We two slaves, whom they can deal with as they please, are attentive - we look forward to being able to pound on the outer door with control at any moment.
Andrey Andreyevich is trying to give me an abortion with his iodine-smeared hand, without any instruments. But he is so nervous, so agitated that he fails.
I can't breathe in pain, but I suffer without moaning lest someone hear me ... "Stop it!" - I say finally exhausted and we postpone the whole procedure until two days later ... Finally everything turned out - in clots, with severe hemorrhage (quoted after:M. Jakowienko "The wife of the NKVD. Confession of Agnessa Mironowa").
For many others, "everything" did not work out. Thousands of women died in labor camps each year. Only a few of those who survived the camp system left any evidence of their fate. They had nothing to brag about.
And they didn't want to think back to everything they had to do to survive on inhuman soil.
Sources:
- Mira Jakowienko, The NKVD's wife. Confession of Agnessa Mironowa , Znak Horyzont, Krakow 2014.