When I arrived at Popoff Island, there were about 1,400 shpana in the camp; the number of "K.R.'s" could have been divided into this total several times, and there were only seventy "politicals and party men." The last-named, for reasons which I will explain later, do no work at all, and "Mother" was continually letting the shpana off labour of all kinds, so that the whole immense burden of the work to be done was placed upon the shoulders of the "K.R.'s."
This is still the case, although in a lesser degree: the shpana do little work, the politicals none at all, and the "K.R.'s" bear the whole burden.
The criminals' curious code of ethics combines all the shpana of the Solovetsky Islands into one indivisible unit. This code of ethics is ruthlessly applied. If the criminals discover that there is a sutchenyi among their number — this word means in their language a turncoat, a traitor, who is betraying their secrets to the authorities — he is immediately put to death in the most cruel manner. Nowhere is the principle "one for all and all for one" put into application in so high a degree as among the common criminals of the Solovky.
In the middle of 1924 a gang of footpads, who had for a long time evaded all attempts to capture them, were arrested in Moscow. Their leader was a bandit named Moiseiko; his fellow-robbers nicknamed him Petlura, for which reason the members of the band were called "Petlurists." These footpads had on their conscience, besides a number of armed robberies, many "wet affairs" (a "wet affair" means a murder in the thieves' language). One of the most active of the Petlurists, known as Avrontchik, turned sutchenyi, betrayed the gang and brought about its arrest.
The gang consisted of thirty-eight persons, both men and women. Thirty of them were "sent to the left" (thieves' jargon for "shot") in the Butyrka prison in Moscow. Eight men, among them Avrontchik, and four women (the wives of men who had been shot) were despatched to the Solovky. When the "traitor" arrived at the "distributing hut," the surviving Petlurists burst in and almost beat him to death. The male Petlurists were arrested and Avrontchik taken to hospital. But he was not safe even in hospital; the four women of the band entered the hospital hut and killed Avrontchik, smashing in his skull.
The affair was referred to Moscow. The Gpu replied briefly: "shoot." In November, 1924, the remaining Petlurists, men and women, fell to Tchekist bullets, confirming by their death the principles of the shpana.
If the shpana do not shrink from murdering persons objectionable to them, much less does the robbing of all and sundry seem to them a thing to be boggled at. Further, they are compelled to rob by continual hunger, cold — in the Solovky one quite often sees shpana prisoners absolutely naked — and their passion for cards and drink.
Their robberies, the victims of which are invariably "K.R.'s," are planned with quite professional ingenuity. As I have said, on our arrival at Popoff Island we were moved from hut No. 6 to hut No. 9. This hut is divided into four compartments by wooden partitions. In the first compartment lived the headman of the camp, in the second the Casino-ites, the third was the camp prison, and in the fourth were we "K.R.'s," having a common wall with the prison.
Several times the shpana played the following trick on us. They committed some offence more serious than usual, and so, intentionally, got into the prison; then they bored a hole in the wooden wall which separated the prison from our quarters, quite close to the floor, and at night, creeping noiselessly under the beds, stole our things, food and money. If anyone tried to recover the things, they beat him to death.
The shpana always shared their plunder with the prison guards and the headman, so that nobody paid any attention to our complaints, and once the headman declared that we ourselves had robbed each other.