For example, when we had cleansed the hut indicated by the authorities of all the filth that was in it, the grateful shpana sent us an ultimatum, with a detailed schedule of the quantities of bread, sugar, tobacco, tea, etc., which were to be handed over immediately to the criminal who brought the ultimatum. If we failed to comply with the ultimatum, we were told, we should be first beaten and then plundered in more thorough fashion.
We had to hand over the things demanded. Ultimatums of this kind are very fashionable among the shpana; the "K.R.'s" are snowed under with them, both at the monastery and in the Kem camp.
It is very hard to give an exact account or analysis of the prisoners labelled "K.R.'s." Their number is considerable — there are nearly three thousand on Solovetsky Island — and they are composed of such variegated elements that a general definition of a "K.R." is very hard to arrive at. A division of them into groups, even an approximate one, will enlighten the reader in a general sense as to who the "K.R.'s" are, and why they are in the Solovky, but it is bound to be incomplete; there are in the camps many "K.R.'s" whom one does not know where to place.
There are in the Northern Camps for Special Purposes many representatives of the so-called liberal professions — engineers, barristers, literary men, artists, teachers, doctors. There are many teachers from the primary and secondary schools and from the universities, both men and women; the latter are in a majority. There are a considerable number of non-party peasants and workmen, artisans and small employees. The Cossacks of the Don, the Kuban and Siberia, and the peoples of the Caucasus, are strongly represented. Of the non-Russians who are Soviet subjects the most numerous are Estonians, Poles, Karelians (some of those who returned from Finland on the strength of an "amnesty")[[21]] and Jews. The last-named are sent to the Solovky, in most cases with their families, either for adhering to Zionism, or for "economic counter-revolution," or for so-called "armed banditism" — by which the Gpu understands anything it pleases, from membership (even in the past) of a Monarchist party to the manufacture of counterfeit notes.
There are many foreigners in the Solovky; I will allude to them in greater detail later.
The largest categories of all consist of officers of the old and the new armies, business men, pre-Revolution and of the "Nepman"[[22]] order, important representatives of the old regime, the bureaucracy and the aristocracy, and also the clergy.
At the present time there are some three hundred bishops, priests and monks in the Solovky; to this number should be added several hundred laymen who were sent to the Solovky along with them, generally under Clause 72 of the Criminal Code — "ecclesiastical counter-revolution, resistance to the confiscation of church valuables, propaganda, the education of children in a religious sense," and so on. The clergy at the Solovky, though more oppressed and humiliated by the camp authorities than any other category of prisoners, are remarkable for the submissiveness and stoicism with which they endure their moral and physical sufferings.
Being accustomed to hard bodily labour from childhood, the clergy are rightly considered to be the best workers in the camps, and from this point of view are almost valued by the administration, though it exploits them infamously. Priests are sent to do all the most exhausting tasks. For example, whole sections of the narrow-gauge railway were laid entirely by clerics.
All kinds of religious services, of course, are forbidden. One of the priests in the camp on Popoff Island, a feeble old man, died. He begged the commandant with tears in his eyes to allow the Vladika Illarion to administer the Holy Sacrament to him. The commandant refused in abusive terms.
Every day in the year is counted as a working day, and at Easter and Christmas the authorities endeavour to give the clergy the most degrading work possible — for example, cleaning out the latrines.