JANOS ROZSAS In the Gulag with Solzhenitsyn1. In the course of my correspondence with Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, he put the following question to me on March 12 1965 : "By the way, I have never asked you-since you learnt the language only later and did not know Russian at the time they read out the charge ( ...) to you - what language did they use to conduct the investigation of your case? Or was there no such thing at all?"
In my letter of April 12 1965, I answered with the following: “they conducted the investigation of my case in Russian, with the help of extremely poor interpreters (Poles and Hutzuls, former prisoners - of - war). I signed the record, as I still clearly remember, on page 16. It would be good to know what it contained. When I was rehabilitated I was burning with curiosity and thought of asking for a copy of the sentence : what did I actually serve a sentence of nine full years for? But then I changed my mind. Why should I take up the past? It might occur to someone to wonder why on earth I needed that? All things considered-it was not necessary at all...”
That settled the question for the time being.
In the spring of 1974, I learnt that Solzhenitsyn included a paragraph of a few lines on me in the first volume of his Gulag Archipelago, published by Harper and Row (page 279 in Chapter 7 Part One -"In the engine room..."). It reads: The ten-year-sentence of János Rózsás, a Hungarian was read to him in the corridor Russian, without any translation. He signed it, not knowing it was his sentence and he waited a long time afterwards for his trial.Still later, when he was in camp, he recalled the incident very vaguely and realized what had happened. If one compares the relevant section of my letter of 1965 on the subject with the paragraph just quoted, it becomes clear that the two descriptions do not altogether tally.
I think that due to several reasons (his house having been searched, moving house repeatedly, etc.), Solzhenitsyn must have mislaid my letters. When he wrote it all down, he still remembered that I had not understood what was said during the court proceedings and did not know what I had signed at the time - but the real facts looked somewhat different, although, of course, the essence remained same.
During the court proceedings I always knew what was happening to me and where I was, but I really do not know to this day why I was given those ten years, of which I fully served nine in various Soviet prisons, reception and labor camps. I do not know, even today, what were the war crimes they listed in the papers of the proceedings against me, because of which for a long time they called me a fascist, a bandit, an enemy of the people. 2 Kazakhstan, 1950. Early in August, a consignment of about a hundred convicts arrived at the prison camp of Ekhibastuz from Pavlodar prison. Most of the new arrivals were intelligent, educated men, mainly from Moscow and Leningrad. It was with this group that Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn reached our forced labor camp. I did not know him at the time. He was one of the many newcomers who were strangers in this desert camp. For quite some time they stood out amongst the drab mass of old prisoners, broken in body and spirit.
On July 26 1951,our brigade, which had so far worked on a construction job, was redirected to new employment, in the metal works, the masterskaya. Here we had to extend the barbed wire around the plant and the generator station to make room for new workshops in the shadow of the watch-tower.
At the first opportunity, after the noon roll call, I looked up my friend and fellow countryman Tibor Benko in the iron-foundry. The strict discipline in the camp made it much too dangerous to visit someone in the huts, and I could rarely risk seeing him there. I was glad to be able to have a word with him during the day, and before the evening roll call on the job where one could move somewhat more freely.
That was when I met Tibor’s foreman, who had come recently. He was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
“Sasha,” Tibor stopped him. “Come here. A fellow countryman of mine.”
He turned to us and his sharp-featured, bony face broke into a friendly smile. He held out his hand and introduced himself, giving a slight nod.
“I like Hungarians,” he said. ”All those I met in prison and in the camps have been resourceful and honest men.”
“He reads a great deal,” Tibor pointed at me. “He’s the one I’ve already told you about.”
“And what kind of books do you read ?” Solzhenitsyn asked.
I shrugged uncertainly. “Here I have been particularly impressed by Lermontov, and I like Lev Tolstoy. But I really read everything printed that comes my way. The camp library does not offer much choice."
"Well, we shall certainly talk again. I hope now we shall meet more often." Solzhenitsyn held out his hand and continued into the workshop.
"He is a decent fellow’’, 'I'ibor said. "He knows a great deal, is a great reader, and he also writes. He always speaks of serious things in our room. You would surely enjoy his company. He never quarrels with anyone, and does not accept anything from those who get parcels. He only looks after official business, otherwise we are scarcely aware of having a brigade leader."
Slowly I made friends with Solzhenitsyn. We had many subjects in common. He mainly asked me about what I read, and he was also interested in what I thought of the Russians.
Sasha liked to talk about the peculiarities of the Slav languages; the old pre-reform spelling occupied his mind, the reform, and he enjoyed explaining the history of Old or Church Slavonic.
We often talked sitting on the scrap-heap beside the iron-foundry. I was an attentive listener, whatever the subject.
Since he was a maths and physics teacher, he once asked me whether I would like to take up mathematics. He must have missed teaching a great deal. But I shook my head - let us just stay with literature, this is much more interesting.
I liked to listen when he talked about the Russian classics. He always asked me what I happened to be reading, and what I found interesting in it. He advised me how I could study the works of Russian and Ukrainian writers methodically, even under those dire circumstances, so that I could most fully catch the essence of their message.
Contact between us was broken off for several months when they divided the camp and separated the two halves by a mud wall. Between October 7. 1951 and January 6 1952, I could not meet my friends in the tradesmen's brigade either on the job or in the camp.
On January 6 1952, a great migration started between the two neighbouring camps. The prisoners were regrouped from one camp into the other according to their nationality. 3 Ukrainians, together with the Estonians and the Chechens, as the most unruly nationalities, were put in the larger Camp 2. Prisoners of other nationalities were moved over from the other side into our Camp l, which now also housed 1he tradesmen's brigades. The reason for this grouping according to nationalities was that they were afraid of a Ukrainian mutiny and thought it better to put them under especially strict guard.
I was very happy that Solzhenitsyn and his brigade were moved to our camp, together with the other tradesmen's brigades. The Ukrainian tradesmen were brought over as well, they made an exception with them.
As soon as Tibor and his lot arrived, I visited them daily. Although it was still strictly forbidden to stroll about and visit other huts, doing so could be severely punished with detention, I took the risk just to be with them.
Engineer Karbe, Panin, and a few other good friends usually came over from the next room to join Solzhenitsyn. It was always worth listening to their nightly conversation.
Usually there was a newspaper on the table. If the brigade members were off to eat, I sat down at the table and read the latest news in the Kazakhstan Pravda (the central Pravda was only available in the "house of culture").
In the weeks of the great reshuffle in January, I once again wanted to leave my old brigade and switch to Solzhenitsyn's brigade. In vain did my friends try all sorts of things, they failed once again. I knew work would be harder in the foundry, but it would also have put an end to the period of starvation and I could have worked with those whom I could only meet now by taking the risk of being caught.
In the evening of 22 January 1952, a mutiny broke out in our camp, of al1 places. Not in the camp of the dangerous Ukrainians, but among the selected, screened, timid lot.
I was in the room of Tibor and his mates, who had gone to eat. Yury Karbe came over from the next room, for some reason he did not go to the mess that clay. He took up a book from Solzhenitsyn's table and started to read. I was turning the pages of the paper at the table. We made brief comments now and then, but otherwise sat in silence.
We sat up at the sound of irregular shooting. Machine gun bursts and separate shots. The concert was soon joined by the clatter of light machine-guns. "Soldiers exercising in the steppes," we commented casually.
But men running breathless into the hut brought news in a choking voice that the camp inmates had stormed the stone prison and were breaking up the wooden fence around the building. The alarm had sounded and the gates were opened to let the soldiers enter the camp area. They fired warning rounds over the heads of the men, but some stray bullets of course went lower as well.
In these feverish moments my first thought was to get back into my own hut in the other half of the camp. Come what may, I had to be in my place. Tibor came running from the opposite direction stopped me rushing headlong into the confusion. He drew me back among themselves.
The noise of the meeting slowly began to subside, but the time of cruel of retaliation was still to come. The prison guards drove the prisoners into the huts with iron rods, raining bone-breaking blows on the stumbling and moaning crowd.
Those who did not strip to their underwear promptly, lying down on their bunks, were threatened with shooting.
Luckily there was an empty place on the bunk above Solzhenitsyn in Tibor’s room. I undressed and covered myself with the quilted jackets they lent me, lest the goalers found fault with me.
Next morning I succeeded in slipping away out of the hut into the mess from where I could get back to my brigade and join the inmates of my own hut.
The excitements of the revolt and the general hunger strike that followed were scarcely over, and a period of retaliation had started, when Solzhenitsyn became seriously ill. He grew very thin. For weeks already he had felt unwell, suffering with stomach pains. He was taken over to the hospital in the other camp. We did not know whether we would see him again.
The mutineers and those suspected having taken part were taken to lead and copper mines.
4 Suddenly the news ran through the camp : „They are taking away the literate” : in other words the regular clientele of the „house of culture” accused of having prepared mutiny in the minds.
Those who liked to read books and newspapers, were now trembling with fear. Miraculously I was left out of deportation. Perhaps when they saw from my file that I was Hungarian, they did not believe the stool pigeon that I was one of the literate.
In all probability Solzhenitsyn would have been taken away with the literate after his operation from his sick-bed. He described it all in his Cancer Ward which includes many autobiographical elements.
The protagonist is operated upon for cancer of the stomach by a German surgeon by the name of Karl Fiodorovich. As far as I know, however, the surgeon was Hungarian, Dr. Ferenc Várkonyi (Fiodorovich!) from Budapest, who was deported right after the operation. Unfortunately, I have never since heard anything about Doctor Várkonyi, who must have been 30 to 35 at the time.
Solzhenitsyn left the hospital sometime in the last days of March. He was very weak and could not work for quite some time. He did not take back the leadership of the brigade; his successor was a small Russian lad called Chaly, and he was followed by a stocky, ruddy-cheeked Russian by the name of Aleksandrov.
In the beginning of April 1952, a new accounting system was introduced in the camp. A fragment of what we earned was was credited to our account as wages. We could draw some of it as pocket money, and the rest accumulated until our release.
As soon as he was able to start work, Solzhenitsyn Went to the iron-foundry as an unskilled laborer. He had less than a year to go until his release. Release meant the need for money and earnings in the iron-foundry were among the highest in the camp. So he chose hard work rather than the pittance which was the average earnings of the brigade. It was hard for him to get used to tough manual work, but fortunately his fellow workers were considerate and spared him excessive effort
Solzhenitsyn now spent more and more of his spare time browsing in Vladimir Dal's large black-covered dictionary, writing out in a tiny script the words he found interesting and making notes about their possible use in current usage, but he still found time for me as well.
Like all Russian intellectuals I had occasion to talk with, Solzhenitsyn was interested in the 1848-49 Hungarian Revolution. He was curious to know how the role Prince Pashkievits' army played in Hungary, when the Russian soldiery crushed the Hungarian fight for freedom, survived in Hungarian historical memory.
By the end of August 1952, me and my brigade were back in the metal works, where we built a new workshop. Towards evening, after work, I always went to the foundry. I took a shower there and then talked to Solzhenitsyn, Tibor and the other foundry workers until the evening roll call.
Late in September, our brigade was moved into Hut 2, where the tradesmen's brigade lived. This meant I lived in the same hut with Solzhenitsyn and his mates. I only had to go over to the neighboring room and could join their evening palaver. As I recall, Solzhenitsyn never talked about himself, his childhood or youth, and he did not even mention his earlier prison and camp experiences. Anyway, it was not customary in the camp to question others about their past, and particularly the circumstances of their sentence, if they themselves did not speak about it.
Solzhenitsyn was particularly reticent in his respect. Whatever I know about his life I have learned from his works which have appeared in print, mainly The Gulag Archipelago. As regards his character and behavior, there is no contradiction between the Solzhenitsyn as he appears in the pages of his books and the Solzhenitsyn I came to know. But I would never have thought that Solzhenitsyn, always so polite, helpful and smiling, had the resolution and prophetic vocation he displayed his later years.
Only once, on a single occasion did I notice the burning passion that animated him, when he recited a poem by Aleksandr Blok to me. Blood rose his head, his eyes flashed, and the frail, thin man shook his fist. 5 Under construction. |