The Secret Speech

words that had been spoken aloud in Congress, transcribed and printed and bound, distributed to the farthest reaches of their country:

— How is it that a person confesses to crimes that he has not committed? Only in one way: the application of torture, bringing him to a state of unconsciousness, deprivation of his judgment, taking away his human dignity…

The man beside Lazar put an arm around him. The prisoner beside him did the same, and soon every prisoner was linked together, arm across shoulder.

Lazar tried not to pay the guards any attention, concentrating on the speech, but he was distracted by their dilemma — they were grappling with the decision of whether to stop the commander from reading, or to stop the prisoners from listening. Deciding it was easier to deal with one man, rather than one thousand, they banged their fists against the door, ordering their commander to cease immediately. Intended to protect against arctic conditions, the door had been constructed out of thick logs. The small windows were fitted with shutters. There was no easy way in. Desperate, one guard fired his machine gun, bullets splintering uselessly up and down the wood. It didn’t open the door but it achieved the desired result. The reading stopped.

Lazar felt the silence like a loss. He was not alone. Angry at having the speech cut short, prisoners to the left and right began to stamp their feet, quickly joined by others, by everyone, a thousand legs up and down, beating against the frozen ground:

— More! More! More!

The energy was irresistible. Before long his foot was also pounding the ground.

* * *

LEO AND THE COMMANDER LISTENED to the commotion outside. Unable to risk opening the shutters, for fear of the guards shooting them, they couldn’t see what was going on. The vibrations from the stamping traveled through the floorboards. The sound of the chanting traveled through the thick walls:

— More! More! More!

Sinyavksy smiled, placing a hand to his chest, seeming to interpret their response as an affirmation of his reformed character.

The mood in the camp was volatile, exactly as Leo desired. He gestured at the pages of the speech that he’d been hastily editing, condensing the document, compressing it to a series of shocking admissions. He handed the commander the next page. Sinyavksy shook his head:

— No.

Leo was taken aback:

— Why stop now?

— I want to give my own speech. I’ve been… inspired.

— What are you going to say?

Sinyavksy raised the speaker to his mouth, addressing Gulag 57:

— My name is Zhores Sinyavksy. You know me as the commander of this Gulag where I have worked for many years. Those who arrived recently will think me a good man, fair and just and generous.

Leo doubted that. However, he tried to appear convinced by these declarations. The commander was treating his speech with absolute seriousness.

— Those who have been here longer will not think upon me so kindly. You have just listened to Khrushchev admitting mistakes made by the State, admitting Stalin’s acts of cruelty. I wish to follow the example of our leader. I wish to admit my own mistakes.

Hearing the word—follow—Leo wondered if the commander was driven by guilt or by a life of unquestioning obedience. Was this redemption or imitation? If the State reverted to terror, could Sinyavksy return to brutality with the same suddenness that he’d embraced leniency?

— I have done things of which I am not proud. It is time I asked for your forgiveness.

Leo realized that the potency of his confession might be even greater than the admissions made by Khrushchev. The prisoners knew this man. They knew the prisoners that he’d killed. The chanting and stamping stopped. They were waiting for his confession.

* * *

LAZAR NOTICED that even the guards were no longer trying to break down the door, waiting for the commander’s next words. After a pause, the tinny voice of Sinyavksy sounded out across the camp:

— Arkhangelsk, my first posting: I was tasked with supervising prisoners working in the forest. They would cut down trees, readying the timber for transportation. I was new to the job. I was nervous. My orders were to collect a fixed amount of timber each month. Nothing else mattered. I had norms just like all of you. After the first week I discovered a prisoner had been cheating in order to fulfill his norm. Had I not caught him, my count would have been short and I would’ve been accused of sabotage. So you see… it was about survival, nothing else. I had no choice. I made an example of him. He was stripped naked, tied to a tree. It was summer. At sunset his body was black with mosquitoes. By the morning he was unconscious. By the third day he was dead. I ordered his body to remain in the forests as a warning. For twenty years, I didn’t think about that man. Recently, I think about him every day. I do not remember his name. I don’t know if I ever knew his name. I remember that he was the same age as me at the time. I was twenty-one years old.

Lazar noted how the commander moderated honesty with qualifications:

I had no choice.

With those words thousands died, not with bullets but with perverse logic and careful reasoning. When Lazar returned his attention to the speech, the commander was no longer talking about his career in the forests of Arkhangelsk. He was discussing his promotion to the salt mines of Solikamsk:

— In the salt mines, as an efficiency measure, I ordered men to sleep underground. By not moving the men up and down at the end of each shift, I saved thousands of precious work hours, benefiting our State.

The prisoners shook their heads, imagining the conditions of that underground hell:

— My purpose was to discover new ways of bringing benefit to our State! What could I say? Had I not thought of this, my junior officer might have proposed it and I would’ve been punished. Did these men need daylight more than the State needed salt? Who had the authority to make that argument? Who dared to speak up for them?

One of the guards, a man Lazar had never seen before, strode toward them, brandishing a knife. They were going to cut the wire and kill the speech. The guard was smiling, pleased with his solution:

— Out of my way.

The foremost prisoner stepped forward, standing on the wire, blocking the guard. A second prisoner joined him, and a third, a fourth, keeping the wire out of reach. Smiling threateningly, as if to say he would remember this for later, the guard moved to another exposed stretch of wire. Responding, the prisoners quickly pushed forward, filling the space, protecting the wire. The knot of prisoners reshaped until there was a dense line of prisoners standing side by side stretching from the timber pole supporting the speaker to the base of the administration barracks. The only way the guard could get to the wire was by crawling under the barracks, something his pride stopped him from doing.

— Get out of my way.

The prisoners didn’t move. The guard turned to face the two vakhta, the fortified towers overlooking the camp. He waved at the gunners, pointing toward the prisoners before hurrying away.

There was a burst of gunfire. In unison the prisoners dropped to their knees. Lazar looked around, expecting to see dead and injured. No one seemed to be hurt. The volley must have been targeted over their heads, hitting the side of the barracks, a warning shot. Slowly everyone stood up. Voices from the back cried out:

— We need help!

— Bring the feldsher!

Out of sight, Lazar couldn’t see what was going on. The calls for medical assistance continued. But no one