crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
three tiers of bunks, with a 60 cm. wide space per prisoner. In most camps, the prisoners slept on wooden
boards, but in some places, straw bags served as mattresses. In contrast to transit camps, barracks could
usually be deloused, but cockroaches still plagued the prisoners. Inmates worked 10–14 hour days. In
theory, on Sundays, they were exempt from work, but the commanding officers would find work for
them on these days too. There were places where prisoners got unsubstantial wages, but it was not a
general practice. The prisoners who had the best chances for survival were those able to work as skilled
labourers in some factory or farm. However, the majority of prisoners worked in mines, cleared forests,
or did road and railway construction. The worst conditions were in the Gulag camps, where condemned
prisoners were held. The three most notorious camp districts (Vorkuta, Norilsk, and Kolyma) were
located north of the Arctic Circle. Survivors remember winter temperatures often reaching -60° C,
and even worse was the constant wind. In the Far East, the Taiset camp deserves mention, where the
prisoners began to build the Baikal-Amur railway (BAM), hailed as the construction project of the
century.
As a result of the poor living and working conditions and the insufficient provisions in the Soviet
camps, many of the prisoners became sick, and close to a third of the prisoners perished. It emerges
from the prisoners’ accounts that the mass mortality was not only caused by the general post-war
destitution. Multitudes died as a consequence of the typically Soviet-style disorganization, corruption,
and disregard for human life.
Through the contacts with local residents in the workplaces, prisoners got acquainted with the
everyday life in the Soviet Union. The memoirs demonstrate authentically and in detail how theft became
an organic part of Soviet life. Formerly high-ranking Soviet party functionaries reiterated this quite openly
in Kolima: “... they told us that the whole system here is unadulterated cheating, stealing, and lies. /.../
anyone who doesn’t understand this, is bound to fail and die. One cannot live any differently in this
country. /.../ It is almost compulsory, because whoever doesn’t do it is doing it the wrong way ...” 12
The movement, exchange, and circulation of objects and assets were not ensured by selling and
buying, or by simple barter, but by theft. The guards stole from the prisoners and vice versa; the prisoners
stole from one another and from their workplace. The Hungarian officer brigade-leader stole from his
subordinates; the Soviet higher authority stole from the prisoners when he sold the quilted jackets that
were meant for them. The “free” workmates stole in the same way, as did the gate-keepers and the
overseers.
The survivors could not talk about their experiences in the Soviet Union. On their return to
Hungary, they were threatened with being recaptured and taken back to the camps if they talked. The
prisoners, the majority of whom returned in 1947 and 1948, would soon find out for themselves that, in
contrast to what they had hoped for, it was not freedom that awaited them at home; the system that was
being built in Hungary was one they had already experienced in Soviet captivity.
12
Interview with Gulag survivor . Kálmán Bálintfi, manuscript in the possession of the author, pp. 49–50.
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