Smashed in the USSR: Fear, Loathing and Vodka on the Steppes by Caroline Walton, Ivan Petrov Page A

answer?” grumbles Kuznetsov, but we hear the scrape of his bench.
    “Which word is the subject of the sentence?”
    After some thought Kuznetsov answers: “Er, Masha?”
    “Correct! and which is the verb?”
    “Um, ‘shop’?”
    “No. Anyone else?”
    “Of course it is ‘goes’ but we would say: ‘staggers’” another voice pipes up.
    “How do you mean ‘staggers’?” asks the teacher.
    “Well, Masha’s obviously got a hangover and is going for a bottle.”
    “No not, ‘staggers’ but ‘waddles,’ because of the huge arse on her.”
    At that point everyone throws themselves into an impassioned discussion about Masha’s qualities and failings, her physique and her temperament.
    When exams take place candidates spill out of the classroom into the library looking for us. Together we help them solve problems and correct their written mistakes. The teacher does not try to stop us. The more who pass the better it looks for him.
    Our camp has a technical school which is supposed to give inmates skills that will deter them from the path of crime. The yard outside the school is full of farm machinery waiting to be repaired. It is protected from the weather by tarpaulin and guarded by an old man who was sentenced for killing his wife. In her death struggle she hit him so hard with an iron that he has a dent in his cranium the size of a fist. The blow altered his mind.
    Oleg and I approach the old man one day. “Look here, Grandad,” says Oleg, “it’s a pity to sit here all day doing nothing. If you cut this tarpaulin into strips and sew them together you’ll be able to make a balloon. We’ll bring you some rope; you’ll tie your balloon to your chair, and then you’ll be able to float out of here. If you leave on a moonless night no one will see you. We won’t say anything. It’ll be a secret between the three of us.”
    The old man is excited by the plan and for a whole month he busily sews together pieces of tarpaulin. He is eventually caught, but by this time he has taken to sewing. One day he turns up on evening parade in a marshal’s uniform, sewn from tarpaulin bleached white by the sun, and covered in stripes and tin medals made from old fish cans. We cheer as he smartly salutes the camp guards.
    It is hard to get used to the camp regime, with endless searches and body counts. For hours we have to stand like sheep in therain or snow. The semi-literate guards line us up in fives; even so, they usually lose count and have to start again.
    Those who want to get out of work cut their wrists or nail their scrotums to their bunks. A man in our cell slashes his wrists with a piece of smuggled razor. I want to call the guards. Oleg just shrugs and says: “Don’t be in a hurry; there’s not much threat of death when the world looks on.”
    And it is true; no one dies of a few slashes across their wrists. They do it for show, out of hysteria.
    A prisoner named Kuptsev is an exception. He’s always hiding somewhere in the basement or under the roof, slitting his wrists and waiting for someone to find him. He never seeks help himself. When I ask him why he does it he replies: “The sensation of blood draining out of my body is like nothing else in the world.”
    Another man rips his stomach open. He stands smiling at the guards, with his dripping guts cupped in his hands. Stories of people who cut themselves up are usually told with a grin but they’re not funny. Everyone responds to cruelty and injustice in their own way.
    In camp I find the lack of solitude even harder to bear than the loss of freedom. You’re always in a crowd. This is not so bad when you’re working during the daytime, but at night you sleep among hundreds of men whose faces you got tired of a long while ago. You start to hate your fellow inmates and they you.
    At first I am surprised to see zeks turn on warders for no apparent reason, insulting them and getting punished for it. Then I start to do the same thing myself, just