An island hell: A Soviet prison in the far north

by S. A. Malʹsagov

Once more we had to plunge into the depths of the scrub. It rained unceasingly, the days were raw and windy. For four more days we had nothing to eat. We had only our tobacco.

At last we came to a wooden footpath raised above the water. We went along it and came to a tiny hut in the middle of the marshes. We examined the little place carefully, but could find nothing eatable. While the rest of us were making a fire of brushwood in the rain, Bezsonoff continued to prospect in the neighbourhood of the hut, and suddenly returned from his reconnaissance with five loaves of black bread in his hands. He ate greedily as he walked. I thought at first it was a hallucination caused by hunger, but no, it was real bread, and plenty of it!

It was evidently a hut belonging to Karelian hay-makers. They bring their stores of food to their huts in winter, because in summer it is impossible to get to them; the marshes are turned into an inland sea. Not far from our hut Bezsonoff found a wooden shelter like a gigantic mushroom, with an opening in the middle, and under it exactly a hundred huge loaves, three bags of groats and a bag of salt. Our joy knew no bounds. We decided to have a good rest. Happily, the possibility of a Tchekist ambush in the midst of the marshes — the passage of which was quite impracticable except by a footpath such as we had found — could be almost entirely dismissed. We made out of that bread (in fancy) tea, cooked meat and various kinds of soup! We lived in the hut until each of us had five cakes of bread left.

Then — westward once again! Water, water, water without end. We marched for nearly a week on the five cakes per man. We found a path, which led us to a lonely dairy farm. We hid, kept our ears open, and finally sent Sazonoff on to get food. When he came back with bread and butter we noticed that a peasant woman ran out of the cottage and hurried to a boat which lay by the bank. We had evidently come to a Communist's house, and the woman had gone to fetch Red soldiers. We fired a few shots after her; she took fright and went back to the house.

We pillaged those Communists without mercy. We took a tub of butter, a lot of white bread, and all the fish there was in the house. We had now so much food that even Bezsonoff and I, who usually walked at the head of the party in "light marching order," rifle in hand, had each of us to shoulder a sack.

We were by this time simply in rags. The thorny bushes had torn our clothes to shreds; our boots had come unstitched. With tangled beards, incredibly filthy faces, holes at knees and elbows, we looked like cannibals, or escaped convicts — which, for that matter, was just what we were.

Going along a narrow path through the woods, we came upon tracks of Red soldiers' boots and the stump of a makhorka cigarette. As we had no tobacco left by then, we eagerly seized the stump, and each of us had two puffs at it. Sazonoff and Malbrodsky insisted that we should leave the dangerous path. We came to a river. We looked for a ford for over three hours, but could not find one, and had to go back to the path we had abandoned.

After we had walked for a long time we came to a place where the marks of many feet were plainly visible. We knew from this that we were quite close to the frontier; but we could not say even approximately where the frontier was. We had no map, and none of us knew how many miles we had to go to reach Finland. The arrow of the compass showed us where west lay, and that was all.

We followed the tracks cautiously. We had just gone round a slight hillock, when from behind a big rock there came a hail of bullets. I was so taken by surprise that I stopped dead. Fifty or sixty rounds were fired at us point blank. We saw the flashes from the rock. But not one of us was touched. Not till then did we perceive that the ambush was laid on both sides of the path. The woods, particularly dense at that spot, saved us. We scattered among the undergrowth. The firing went on for a long time. It may have been the Soviet frontier patrol we had encountered.

Moving swiftly westward, we came to a halt again at the river. We could still find no ford. We tried to find a way round; we went a long way and came back again. We learnt a few days later that this stream was the frontier between Russia and Finland. It is considered impassable, and is, therefore, guarded by neither Finlanders nor Russians.