Gulag Voices, Daily Life in the Gulag

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Gulag Voices is a volume in the Annals of Communism series edited by Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum. Applebaum warns that the stories should not be taken as a complete cross section of experiences in the Gulag, which is an acronym for the Soviet term, “Main Camp Administration,” because all the writers were literate and survived. Most of the prisoners in the camps were not literate, and did not survive. There are estimates that as many as 25 million people or 15% of the population of the Soviet Union faced imprisonment and slave labor in the Gulag. The memoirs describe the brutality of life in the camps, and the treatment of the prisoners as work animals often results in them losing their humanity. However, there are sprinklings of humanity and kindness amongst the horror. The review will be split into three parts; this part will be about daily life, the second will be about women in the camps (the most brutal of the descriptions), and the final review will be about how people used their relatively good fortune, cleverness, religion, or strength of character to survive. 
 
Kazimier Zarod was a Polish civil servant and army reservist who fled from Warsaw to eastern Poland after the German invasion. He was arrested when the Soviet Union invaded Poland, and was sent to a Siberian forestry camp. There were 108,000 Poles sent to the Gulag and 292,000 were sent to “exile camps.” The Soviet Union concluded a temporary truce with Poland after being invaded by Germany. Stalin allowed a Polish army to be formed, and Zarod marched out of Russia with what was called “Ander’s Army.” He travelled to Tehran, Bombay, Cape Town, and Britain where he joined the Royal Air Force Bomber Command. He provided descriptions of daily life in the prison camp. The black rye bread that was the main diet was allocated based on the amount of work performed, and many were able to earn 75 percent or 800 grams of bread early in their captivity. The allocation shrank as the men weakened, and stealing another’s bread brought a death sentence. The work details began at 5:30 after the morning soup was served. Work continued until 6:00 P.M. and ranks formed at 9:00 to be counted and perhaps recounted if the numbers weren’t correct.

Anatoly Zhigulin became famous for his poetry after his imprisonment. He describes how some were arrested for telling a joke about Stalin or listening to a joke about Stalin. Zhigulin and his friends went further by forming cells to publish anti-Stalinist leaflets. Zhigulin realized he was going to starve to death when he became too weak to earn a decent allocation of bread. Malnutrition “was not on the official list of recognized illnesses,” so he made himself sick by drinking icy water and deep-breathing forty-below air to earn several days of rest in the hospital. He also described how his crew boss, Sergei Zakharchenco, had a knack for laying out roadbeds that required little digging. The crew then would meet their allocation of digging by mixing snow and branches with the dirt. However, he faced starvation again, and committed “Samorub,” which was cutting yourself with your ax. He carefully planned the cut to make it look accidental, because it was considered sabotage if it was intentional. He aimed at the gap beside the big toe, made certain the guard was watching, and chopped through his boot. It earned him a couple of months off. Continue reading →

Church Ranch and Rocky Flats Part I

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I recently met with Charles (Charlie) Church McKay to discuss his family’s history and  relationship with Rocky Flats. He was quite candid in discussing some of the past conflicts between his family and the Rocky Flats bureaucrats. He told me that Len Ackand’s book, “Making a Real Killing” is an excellent source of information, and he traded me a copy of that for a copy of my book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked” (free on this web site or at Amazon as either a paperback or Kindle).  He also gave me a compendium titled, “Snapshots of History, Church Ranch and the Church Ranch Family.” That compendium and the summary history of his family on the Church Ranch web site on the heritage link were the sources for this posting. I intend to focus on the family history in this posting, and will detail some of the conflicts with Rocky Flats in Part II.

George Henry Church and Sarah Henderson Miller were married in 1861 in Iowa and departed for Colorado in what they called their honeymoon in a wagon pulled by an ox team. They began this venture despite the fact that most people who had attempted to make the trip with signs such as “Pikes Peak or Bust” had eventually turned around after making a new sign that said something such as “Busted.” Some Indians offered to buy Sarah for nine ponies and $100, and Sarah told George, “You will never have a better offer and better close the sale.” (To give an idea of what $100 was worth in those days, there is mention of buying half a bushel of potatoes and five dozen eggs for fifteen cents.)  A man arrived who told them the Indians weren’t joking, and the discussions ended. The Churches made it to Denver in nine weeks, and Sarah estimated the population at 3,000 to 4,000. They travelled on into the mountains to buy several mining claims. The mining didn’t work out, so they returned to Iowa, bought 50 head of cattle, and made the return trip to homestead. They eventually homesteaded in Jefferson County three and a half miles from the nearest neighbor, and eventually owned land where Rocky Flats was built after the Atomic Energy Commission offered the Church family a low price “under the threat of condemnation.”

The first mention of “Rocky Flat” or “Rocky Flats” I located was in an article titled “Snow Storm of 1913 at Church’s Ranch” by Marcus Church. The storm must have been one of those epic upslope storms where all the moisture is the air is dropped as snow on the Front Range. There was 3 1/2 to 4 feet of snow at the Church ranch, and up to 7 feet in Golden. Snow and wind continued off and on until a “Chinook” warm wind finally began melting some of the drifts on January 3rd. The ranchers battled to keep the horses and cattle dug out of the drifts, watered, and fed.

The Churches were ardent entrepreneurs, and had several firsts in the settlement and development of Colorado. George was the first farmer in to successfully harvest a crop of winter wheat, although he recognized early that farming would be much more successful with irrigation. He constructed a ditch from the mouth of Coal Creek Canyon and built the first irrigation reservoir, Church’s Upper Lake,  in 1870-1871 and Church’s Lower Lake a bit later. A contract was made with Golden and Ralston Creek Ditch Company to acquire rights of way and extend the ditch to cover the Church lands. The ditch takes water from Clear Creek and continues to operate today. Water rights were of premium importance when the system was being built and began to operate. An article in the compendium titled “George Henry Church” describes how his decision to build the first irrigation ditches and lakes “…brought enmity of neighbors on Coal Creek, from which he drew the water supply. So high ran the felling that it resulted in threats on his life and it seemed at times that serious trouble would ensue.”

The innovation and ventures didn’t end there. The Churches were the first to bring Hereford cattle to Colorado, built and operated a stage coach stop, and mined gravel. (The gravel business would eventually create significant conflict with Rocky Flats, but that will be covered in Part II.) As is the case for most families, there were also tragedies and failures. Perry Church, younger brother of Marcus, died at the age of 29. The Great Depression hit the family hard, and they were forced to sell 3,000 acres of Front Range properties, including much of the irrigated land. They were able to hold on to about 4,000 acres, which included part of what would become the site of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. The Churches were hard working and independent people, and they were forced to begin dealing with a bureaucracy that strives to make certain all the rules imposed by the bureaucracy are followed. As a self-described “part time libertarian,” it isn’t difficult to judge which side I would take.

Orwellian

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This expression is a companion to a review about Homage to Catalonia written by George Orwell. Orwellian describes situations or conditions destructive to a free society. It refers to control of society by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, and lies. His ideas about personal freedom were developed when he was a British administrator in Burma, and he was fascinated with the effect of colonialism on individuals. Orwellian can mean many things, to include invasion of personal privacy, government control of daily life, and revising history in favor of the government’s interpretation. My favorite is the use of a euphemism to describe an agency that is the opposite of the actual purpose of the agency. For example, the department overseeing the waging of war is called “Ministry of Peace” or “Ministry of Defense.”

Homage to Catalonia

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This is the third review about the Spanish Civil war. The first was written by an author sympathetic to the mostly Communist Republicans. The second was a book critical for how the Soviets used the conflict to rob the Spanish treasury while they spent as much time fighting allies as they did fighting Franco’s Fascists. This book was one of many written by Eric Arthur Blair under the name George Orwell, and I recommend it. Amazon has 123 reviews with an average rating of four and a half stars out of five. The book is based on Orwell’s personal experiences after he went to Spain as a journalist. He volunteered to join the Trotsky Communist army forces called the POUM as a foot soldier. The descriptions of his experiences paint indelible images of the harsh life of the soldiers. They maintained loyalty to one another while living in cold mud mixed with human waste in the trenches while dealing with continual infections of lice and shortages of food and fuel. Orwell’s battles ended after being shot through the neck by a sniper.

Orwell writes that the only real difference between the ragged, miserable men and boys in the trenches on the hills opposite his trench was the color of the flags and uniforms. The soldiers in both sets of trenches were there for no other purpose than to kill the people like themselves in the other trenches. People were enlisting their 15 year-old sons for the small enlistment payment and food they could return to their parents. Some were as young as eleven. Orwell says he was never certain he actually killed anyone. He describes how a “dot” that was a man’s (or boy’s) head above the lip of a distant trench disappeared after he fired a shot, and how he heard lengthy screaming after he tossed a hand grenade into a parapet. He observes he only wished to kill one Nationalist, because if every Republican killed one Nationalist, the war would be won. He maintained his loyalty to the Republicans despite admitting to atrocities being committed by them. He wrote “…the foreign anti-Fascist papers even descended to the pitiful lie of pretending that churches were only attacked when they were used as Fascist fortresses. Actually churches were pillaged everywhere….because….the Spanish Church was part of the capitalist racket.” 



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Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge

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There was a recent article in the Denver Post announcing the opening of a new visitor center at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I have mixed feelings about that announcement. I’m pleased that the Arsenal was able to open that facility, but I would be more pleased if I would hear there is staff and money to develop a similar facility at the Rocky Flats site. There is some irony that the Rocky Mountain Arsenal refuge has opened, because Rocky Flats workers often had to listen to stories about the Arsenal when they told someone they worked at Rocky Flats. I recently told a man I had retired from Rocky Flats, and he told me about armed guards showing up when he was a child playing in a field near the Arsenal. For those who are confused, Rocky Flats was west of Denver and made components for nuclear weapons for the Department of Energy and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal was 10 miles east of downtown Denver and was a chemical weapons plant managed by U.S. Army.

There undoubtedly will be similarities between the Rocky Mountain Arsenal refuge and what hopefully becomes available at the Rocky Flats site. I don’t know whether the Aresenal was pressured to put up signs warning that the area had been used for manufacture and storage of various chemical warfare agents, but there was and is controversy about the planned refuge for Rocky Flats. The first link on a July 2007 press release from the Fish and Wildlife Service is “Rocky Flats Signage,” which explains in detail that public use was a controversial issue in preparation of plans for the refuge. The document explains, “…due to the site’s former use as a nuclear weapons production facility and the contamination that resulted from that use, many members of the public expressed concern regarding the cleanup of the site and the safety of future visitors. Based on the best currently available scientific data and unequivocal determinations by the EPA and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), that the extensive cleanup program resulted in a landscape that is safe for refuge workers and visitors, (the plan) provides for future public use of the site…”

The health risk of “low levels” of plutonium is what creates the controversy. The term “low levels” is in quotes because I’ve been taken to task for using the term with the admonition that all levels create health risks. As I explain in Chapter 25 of my book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked,” (available free on this site and at Amazon as a paperback or as a Kindle version)  the entire earth is contaminated with plutonium and every person has many billions to trillions of plutonium atoms in their bodies resulting from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. There are posts in the archives of this site dated January 18 and 25 that discuss the controversy. People worked in the industrial area of Rocky Flats for years, decades in many cases, and generally their health is as good as people who never worked there. (Some would argue with me about that statement, but I’m going to let them make their own arguments.) My belief is that a visit to areas outside the closed former industrial area won’t create a health risk to my family if I’m ever able to invite them to go there with me. I hope to recreate there early and often. Those who disagree can elect to not visit.

 

Buck as Slang for a Dollar

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There is speculation in straightdope.com that the word “buck” was used in poker games where a token was placed in front of the dealer, and the token was often a knife made of buck horn. It was said, perhaps tongue in cheek, that when it came time for the dealer to surrender the duty to the next player “the buck was passed.” It is plausible that the term was short for buckskin, which was a common medium of exchange. It was written in 1748 that a cask of whiskey was sold to Indians for 5 bucks. “The transition to dollars seems only natural.” The term “sawbuck” for the ten dollar bill has no relation. The old ten dollar bills were denominated with the Roman numeral Xs. “The Xs looked like the X-shaped arms of benches sawyers used to hold up logs for cutting.”