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“That’s not a woman, but a minister,” my late father, an old, experienced barrister, would say about such women. He had dealings with such women who, after the death of their husbands, expanded the enterprises and fed hundreds of people. From the second generation of such entrepreneurs came Zoia.
After the war, Zoia started down a path which, according to Soviet law, is criminal, but in capitalist countries would be called successful business operations. Zoia busied herself with dealing in “gold” coupons.
For each gram of gold turned in to the government through its “Gold Purchasing” department, gold miners received either fifty rubles in cash or a coupon worth the same amount at a special-goods store. These stores were very well supplied. In them were lots of foreign goods—for example, English woolen cloth, which was almost impossible to obtain anywhere. Naturally, there was a great demand for these coupons, in particular by people who had no connection to the mines.
Zoia found out that besides Iakutsk there was a “Gold Purchasing” office in Irkutsk and Novosibirsk where black market dealers purchased these coupons for 600 rubles—that is, twelve times their face value. So Zoia decided to start dealing in these coupons. She began to buy up gold from prospectors and take it to Irkutsk, where she turned it in to the “Gold Purchasing” office and received coupons in return. She then sold the coupons to a speculator. She took a long-term lease on a room in Irkutsk from a landlady who could be trusted. This was very important, since she, a woman, carried large amounts of gold with her and occurrences of robbery were frequent. One had to know with whom you could stay.
During one of these trips from the Iakutsk mines to Irkutsk, Zoia met her future collaborator, Ekaterina Stepanovna, who was in the same line of work. It was convenient for them to join forces: they were safer and less afraid of drawing attention to themselves. Their operations gradually expanded and it became necessary to be more careful in order not to be noticed. In general, they had an agreement: if one of them or both were arrested, under no circumstances were they to confess to the joint venture, but insist that each of them worked individually in order not to be charged with violation of the group law from 7/VIII, for which there were only two penalties, death or a ten-year term. Amnesty was never an option under this law.
When the operations grew, they began to transport gold to Novosibirsk as well. They also rented an apartment in Novosibirsk in order to have a secure place to stay. They often made the Iakutsk-Irkutsk and the Irkutsk-Novosibirsk run by airplane for the sake of speed and comfort. They dressed well. There were suitcases with clothing both at the Irkutsk landlady’s and at the Novosibirsk landlady’s, whom they generously paid and gave gracious gifts to.
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On the last, fateful trip to Novosibirsk, Zoia and Ekaterina Stepanovna brought with them an amount of gold worth no more nor less than 600 thousand rubles. They had decided that on the day of arrival with the gold, Zoia would turn in 150 thousand worth, and then Ekaterina Stepanovna would turn in another 150 thousand rubles’ worth. On the next day they would repeat the procedure with the remaining 300 thousand. Zoia already suspected that they were under surveillance. They instructed their apartment landlady that if one of them or both did not return home that day, under no circumstances was she to call the police, but rather send word to Iakutsk to Zoia’s husband. He would come to pick up her things and the 300 thousand rubles of gold that was left.
On the day of the arrival, Zoia went with half the gold, which they decided to turn in to the “Gold Purchasing” office. She handed in the gold successfully. Zoia said that a speculator approached her to whom she succeeded in passing the coupons. It seemed that this was the same Irkutsk speculator. But when she went outside, she sensed that she was being followed. She encountered a woman who began speaking to her. Wishing to save the woman from any unpleasantness, Zoia asked her to go away. When the woman had barely left, Zoia heard behind her the steps of a man overtaking her and a shout:
“Citizen, stop for one minute.”
Everything was finished.
Ekaterina Stepanovna was arrested the same day either on the street or at the purchasing office itself. The two of them had another agreement: in the event of arrest outside the house, under no circumstances were they to reveal the address of the apartment so that the remaining gold worth 300 thousand rubles would not be lost. However, in spite of the instructions to the landlady, when they both did not return that day for the night, the landlady fell into a panic and reported it to the police. In this way the remaining part of the gold was lost.
“Trifles,” laughed both Zoia and Ekaterina Stepanovna, saying, “Money will come with time! Money is a thing that is acquired. It was, and will be, and still be even more.”
I was delighted. Not every capitalist would be so cheerful about the loss of 600 thousand rubles!
For Zoia it was most important to have the investigation and trial proceed not in Novosibirsk but in Iakutsk. In Iakutsk she had a sister who was married to a public prosecutor, another prosecutor was her cousin, and a third was some sort of relative. With such a situation and the fact that the lost 600 thousand in gold did not make up all of their liquid capital, Zoia had good reason to think that if they succeeded in having the trial in Iakutsk they would manage to smother the case and obtain freedom.
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And they succeeded. They were being sent to Iakutsk for trial. It was in the process of being moved to Iakutsk that they were quartered at the Irkutsk prison. Here they waited for the Iakutsk convoy, which was supposed to arrive specially for them, since there was no regular transfer of convicts to Iakutsk.
Among the female criminals Zoia was just like a tamer in a tiger’s cage. For them, I think, her calm and disdainful confidence had a most powerful effect, so that they did not dare touch her. In her, they also saw a procurer of material goods such as themselves, but on an immeasurably greater scale. Sometimes she liked to tease the “tigers,” when they were already gnashing their teeth, but she was far above their criminal ways.
At that time the cell captains were appointed rather than elected by the inmates as before, and one fine day Zoia was appointed captain. How quickly did order enthrone itself in our chaotic cell! There was no extortion, no getting rations out of turn, no special privileges, no fights. Even cursing occurred less frequently.
How did Zoia achieve this? She didn’t scream, as some captains did. She didn’t threaten to complain to the administration. This relative order seemed to come on its own.
I would end almost every one of my sketches about the Russian women whom I met in prisons and transfer points with a question of their destiny. I wanted to know whether they managed to mend the broken threads of their lives. And I would especially have liked to know about the future of Zoia Zhigaleva.
She undoubtedly was an extraordinary person. How often in the ensuing years in the camps would I remember seeing the helplessness of captains and sometimes even the brigadiers before the anarchic criminal convicts, plain hooligans and even those women who were convicted on article 58 [political prisoners]—not
