Ekibastuz prisoners strike

In 1947, the death penalty was abolished in the USSR and 25-year prison sentences were introduced. As a result, as Victor Levenshtein writes, a new large group of prisoners appeared in the camps, most of them with combat experience (at the front or in partisans) and almost a life sentence — they had nothing to lose. Therefore, they were ready to risk their lives. It was from these prisoners that underground secret centers formed that led the so-called “hack saw” - the destruction of prisoners who openly supported the administration , as well as its secret informants ^[2] .

In the autumn of 1951, a large stage of prisoners arrived from Dubovka, in which there were mainly nationalists from Western Ukraine ^[3] .

Arriving in Ekibastuz, the Ukrainians began to identify the informants who collaborated with the camp administration, and their destruction. So a few dozen people were killed.

On January 6, 1952, the camp authorities began the redeployment of prisoners in Peschanlag . All Western Ukrainians (about 2 thousand) were concentrated in the 2nd camp, and in the first 3 thousand prisoners of other nationalities left. BUR was located on the territory of the first camp . He was transferred, away from the main mass, the most recalcitrant Ukrainians. In the same BUR there was a so-called “luggage room”: a room where some of the informers were hiding, fearing reprisals from the side of the armed camp underground. Suspected activists from the Ukrainian underground, who were placed in the BUR, were imprisoned one by one to informers, where they were tortured.

The strike arose spontaneously.

On the evening of January 22, returning from work, the prisoners of the 1st campus, using the broken bunk of one of the closest toBURU barracks (they didn’t stock up on tools, and bringing it into the zone is difficult) began to demolish the fence around BUR. The idea was to set fire to the chamber of informers, splashing gasoline there. Warders, concerned about the noise, pushed back to the watch. We broke the glass in the headquarters hut. The head of the regime Machakhovsky (or Machekhovsky) and the escaped warders reported to the security about the incident. After that, from the corner towers in the dark, indiscriminate machine-gun fire was opened in a zone where most of the prisoners were not even aware of what had happened.

According to Solzhenitsyn:

In the 9th barrack, a peaceful old man who had finished a ten-year term was killed in his bed: in a month he had to be released; his grown-up sons served in the very army that beat on us from the towers ^[4] .

The stormed drills left his yard. A platoon of machine gunners entered the zone, scribbling in bursts (obviously, over their heads), behind them were guards with iron pipes and batons who beat prisoners. About 20 people were injured and beaten. On January 23, prisoners from those barracks, (including the barracks in which A. I. Solzhenitsyn was kept) in which there were no wounded or killed, went to work. On January 24, the hunger strike began. Notes were sent to Ukrainians from the 2nd camp, but they did not support the strike.

The data cited by Solzhenitsyn in the GULAG Archipelago are confirmed by documents from the Central Archive of the FSB . From the report of S. D. Ignatiev , Minister of State Security of the USSR, G. M. Malenkov and L. P. Beria :

I report that according to the MGB of the Kazakh SSR. January 22 this year. in Ekibastuz camp department (Pavlodar region) of the Peschany camp of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, among the prisoners of the second camp, mass bagpipes arose, accompanied by an attempt to free a group of prisoners from the penalty cell as suspects in the earlier murder of prisoners.

During the establishment of the security guard killed one prisoner and three injured.

The next day, the overwhelming majority of prisoners at the camp point refused to take food and did not return to work, insisting on freeing the criminals from the detention center.

To organize the suppression of bagpipes, employees of the Department of the State Security Department of the Sand Camp and the Office of this camp left for Ekibastuz ^[5] .

The strikers demanded easing and a review of cases:

• Judge the perpetrators of the shooting.
• Remove the locks from the barracks (the barracks were locked at night only in special flags) .
• To remove numbers (numbers on clothes were worn by political prisoners only in special flags) .
• Review of CCO sentences in open courts (demand was put forward by some of the barracks of the striking camp)

On January 26 in the evening, on the third day of the general hunger strike, the 9th barrack stopped it, they were hungry for a day longer. This was, apparently, the last mass hunger strike in the Stalinist GULAG. January 27, Sunday, the cons did not work, commissions from Karaganda, Almaty and Moscow promise to "figure it out." On Tuesday, January 29, a meeting was held with the foremen. It includes the foreman from the mechanical workshops Solzhenitsyn. February 19 from Ekibastuz send a large stage of the instigators of the strike.

The testimonies about the Ekibastuz strike and the hunger strike were left by the participants and eyewitnesses to the events of Semyon Badash , Victor Levenshtein , Dmitry Panin , Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Janosh Rojash ^[6] .

More than two decades later, the Ekibastuz events played an important role in the operation of the KGB of the USSR “Spider”, aimed at discrediting A. I. Solzhenitsyn.

Since 1976, the West German writer and criminologist Frank Arnau and the Czechoslovak journalist Tomasz Rzheszach, on the instructions of the KGB of the USSR ^[7], accused Solzhenitsyn of “squealing” in camp, referring to a copy of the autograph of the so-called “Vetrov’s denunciation” of January 20, 1952 ^[8] . The reason for the charges was the description by Solzhenitsyn himself in chapter 12 of the second volume of the GULAG Archipelago of the recruitment process by its employees of the NKVD for informants (under the pseudonym "Winds"). Solzhenitsyn in the same place emphasized that being formally recruited, he did not write a single denunciation ^[9] .

Solzhenitsyn provided the press with samples of his own handwriting for a handwriting examination, but Arnau and Rzezac evaded the examination. In turn, Arnau and Rzhesach were accused of contacts with the Stasi and the KGB, whose Fifth Directorate , within the framework of Operation Spider, tried to discredit Solzhenitsyn ^{[7] [10]} .

In the text of the "denunciation of Vetrov" there are many inconsistencies with the realities of the strike in January 1952. The strike was largely spontaneous. Solzhenitsyn was not part of the camp underground and could not know about its preparation, Bandera was in the second camp and were separated from the BUR and therefore could not organize an attack, the reaction of the guards shows that the attack on the BUR was a surprise for them, the victims were not among the attackers, and as a result of indiscriminate shooting in the dark zone, etc. ^[7]

• Pimenov R. R. Resistance in 45-56
• Badash Semen . KOLYMA YOU MY, KOLYMA ...
• Solzhenitsyn A.I. The Gulag Archipelago. Volume 3. Part Five. The Cartel Chapter 11. Chains We Tear by Sense (Inaccessible Link)
• Panin D. M. Lubyanka - Ekibastuz: Camp Notes / Preface. I. Panina. - M.: Update: Mercy, 1990. - 576 p.
• Levenshtein V. For the Butyrskaya stone wall. , documentary, 2007.