He reminisced about the great Chekists, connoisseurs of Voltaire, experts on Rabelais, admirers of Verlaine, who had once directed the work of this vast, sleepless building.
He talked about a quiet, kind, old Lett who had worked for years as an executioner; how he always used to ask permission to give the clothes of the man he had just executed to an orphanage. The next moment he would start talking about another executioner who drank day and night and was miserable if he didn't have any work to do; after his dismissal he began visiting State farms around Moscow and slaughtering pigs; he used to carry bottles of pig's blood around with him, saying it had been prescribed by a doctor as a cure for anaemia.
He told of how, in 1937, they had executed people sentenced without right of correspondence every night. The chimneys of the Moscow crematoria had sent up clouds of smoke into the night, and the members of the Communist youth organization enlisted to help with the executions and subsequent disposal of the bodies had gone mad.
He told Krymov about the interrogation of Bukharin, about how obstinate Kamenev had been. Once, when he was developing a theory of his, trying to generalize, the two of them talked all through the night.
He began by telling Krymov about the extraordinary fate of Frankel, an engineer who had been a successful businessman during the NEP period. [54] At the very beginning of NEP, he had built a car-factory in Odessa. In the mid-twenties he had been arrested and sent to Solovki. From there, he had sent Stalin the outlines of a project that, in the words of the old Chekist, 'bore the mark of true genius'.
In considerable detail, with full economic and scientific substantiation, he had laid out the most efficient manner of exploiting the vast mass of prisoners in order to construct roads, dams, hydroelectric power stations and artificial reservoirs.
The imprisoned 'Nepman' became a lieutenant-general in the MGB – the boss appreciated the importance of his ideas.
The twentieth century finally intruded upon the sacred simplicity of penal servitude, the simplicity of spade, pick, axe, saw and gangs of convicts. The world of the camps was now able to absorb progress; electric locomotives, conveyor belts, bulldozers, electric saws, turbines, coal-cutters, and a vast car- and tractor-park, were all drawn into its orbit. It was able to assimilate cargo and passenger aircraft, radio communications, machine-tools, and the most up-to-date systems for dressing ores. The world of the camps planned and gave birth to mines, factories, reservoirs and giant power stations. The headlong pace of its development made old-fashioned penal servitude seem as touching and absurd as the toy bricks of a child.
Nevertheless, in Katsenelenbogen's view, the camp still lagged behind the world that fed it. There were still all too many scholars and scientists whose talents remained unexploited…
The Gulag system had yet to find a use for world-famous historians, mathematicians, astronomers, literary critics, geographers, experts on world painting, linguists with a knowledge of Sanskrit and ancient Celtic dialects. The camp had not yet matured to the stage when it could make use of these people's specialized skills. They worked as manual labourers, or as trusties in clerical jobs or in the Culture and Education Section; or else they wasted away, unable to find any practical application for their vast knowledge – knowledge that often would have been of value not only to Russia, but to the whole world.
Krymov listened. To him, Katsenelenbogen was like a scholar talking about the most important task of his life. He wasn't merely glorifying the camps and singing their praises. He was a genuine researcher, constantly making comparisons, exposing shortcomings and contradictions, revealing similarities and contrasts…
Of course there were also shortcomings on the other side of the wire, although in an incomparably less gross form. There were many people – in universities, in publishing houses, in the research institutes of the Academy – who were neither engaged in the tasks for which they were most suited, nor working to their full capacity.
In the camps, Katsenelenbogen went on, the criminals wielded power over the political prisoners. Unruly, ignorant, lazy and corrupt, all too ready to engage in murderous fights and robberies, they were a hindrance both to the productivity of the camps and to their cultural development. But then, even on the other side of the wire, the work of scholars and important cultural figures was often supervised by people of poor education and limited vision.
Life inside the camps could be seen as an exaggerated, magnified reflection of life outside. Far from being contradictory, these two realities were symmetrical.
Now Katsenelenbogen spoke not like a poet, not like a philosopher, but like a prophet.
If one were to develop the system of camps boldly and systematically, eliminating all hindrances and shortcomings, the boundaries would finally be erased. The camp would merge with the world outside. And this fusion would signal the maturity and triumph of great principles. For all its inadequacies, the system of camps had one decisive point in its favour: only there was the principle of personal freedom subordinated, clearly and absolutely, to the higher principle of reason. This principle would raise the camp to such a degree of perfection that finally it would be able to do away with itself and merge with the life of the surrounding towns and villages.
Katsenelenbogen had himself supervised the work of a camp design office; he was convinced that, in the camps, scientists and engineers were capable of solving the most complicated problems of contemporary science or technology. All that was necessary was to provide intelligent supervision and decent living conditions. The old saying about there being no science without freedom was simply nonsense.
'When the levels become equal,' he said, 'when we can place an equals sign between life on either side of the wire, repression will become unnecessary and we shall cease to issue arrest warrants. Prisons and solitary-confinement blocks will be razed to the ground. Any anomalies will be handled by the Culture and Education Section. Mahomed and the mountain will go to meet each other.
'The abolition of the camps will be a triumph of humanitarianism, but this will in no way mean the resurgence of the chaotic, primeval, cave-man principle of personal freedom. On the contrary, that will have become completely redundant.'
After a long silence he added that after hundreds of years this system might do away with itself too, and, in doing so, give birth to democracy and personal freedom.
'There is nothing eternal under the moon,' he said, 'but I'd rather not be alive then myself.'
'You're mad,' said Krymov. 'That's not the heart of the Revolution. That's not its soul. People say that if you work for a long time in a psychiatric clinic you finally go mad yourself. Forgive me for saying this, but it's not for nothing you've been put inside. You, comrade Katsenelenbogen, ascribe to the security organs all the attributes of the deity. It really was time you were replaced.'
Katsenelenbogen nodded good-humouredly.
'Yes, I believe in God. I'm an ignorant, credulous old man. Every age creates the deity in its own image. The security organs are wise and powerful; they are what holds sway over twentieth-century man. Once this power was held by earthquakes, forest-fires, thunder and lightning – and they too were worshipped. And if I've been put inside – well, so have you. It was time to replace you too. Only the future will show which of us is right.'
'Old Dreling's going back home today, back to his camp,' said Krymov, knowing that his words would not be wasted.
'Sometimes that vile old man disturbs my faith,' Katsenelenbogen replied.
57
Krymov heard a quiet voice saying: 'It's just been announced that we've routed the German forces at Stalingrad. I think Paulus has been captured, but I couldn't quite make it out.'