Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO – PHYSFAC. FOURTH YEAR. 50 DAYS IN LINE (BEGINNING)
The first thing we encountered in the military unit of our training was a show trial. When I say the first, I do not mean the first unusual phenomenon, which could have happened weeks later. No, it puzzled us in the very first hours in the regiment.
Of course, first we were taken to the storeroom and changed clothes. It was quite funny – uniforms and boots were distributed randomly. They were offered to exchange among ourselves and those, who were left with wrong size or without full set, were to return. Over the next hour, our company moved into the third floor of the barracks and changed clothes. The half-dressed students looked like clowns – imagine a person, for example, in a tunic, panama, boots and underpants. But gradually the guys picked up things, and their appearance improved. Of course, the uniform fit us like a saddle on a cow, because soldiers sewed in and adjusted both their tunics and trousers so as not to look like scarecrows. We didn’t know this yet.
Then we were taken to breakfast. The appetite from the sight of the military diner disappeared like in a patient suffering from stomach pain. All over – stench and dirt. For breakfast – millet porridge, doused with… “machine oil” (of course, not, but with a brown odorous liquid called combined fat). I, remembering the pioneer camp in Tskhneti, quickly stuffed a slice of bread into the pocket of my wide riding breeches, and had chewed the other one with a small pioneer ration of butter, washing it down with barely lukewarm, chemically-smelling tea.
Most of the guys did not eat, they were simply were not ready for such food.
“Disgrace! How can you feed people this way?” the students grumbled.
“It’s okay! You’ll get used to it and start gaining weight,” the soldiers from the neighboring tables consoled.
Our officers – teachers from the university came up.
“Today you will be taken to a show trial. The presence of all personnel of the regiment is mandatory – this is an order from the regiment commander. Then lunch, then court again, familiarization with the military unit and the routine. Wake up at six zero zero. The company will be assigned a mentor-commander – an ensign. Classes, general and special, will begin tomorrow.
Okay, we went to the club, where the trial of a soldier was taking place. The soldier, in violation of the regulations, allowed a stranger to his post. The stranger stabbed the sentry with a knife, took away his machine gun and disappeared. That same evening, at the point of a stolen weapon, he forced a guy and a girl to strip naked and have sex in the park. To make sure that they were not faking the action, but were actually carrying out his orders, he decided to feel the prisoners for wet spots and bent down. Then the naked couple, apparently out of despair, knocked him to the ground. Shots were fired and someone was wounded, but the police came running and arrested everyone. The trial of the bandit had already taken place, and he was brought from his jail to the military unit as a witness in the soldier’s case. The scoundrel lied hopelessly that the soldier himself lured him to his post. The soldier, of course, denied this, but he could not explain how it happened that a stranger got to his post.
We, the students, did not understand a thing until the soldiers in the hall explained that many sentries allowed strangers with… vodka or food to their posts.
“Ah, now it’s clear: they feed soldiers such crap that they stop thinking!”
But was this deliberately? What did they have – a gang? The mechanics were not yet clear. It was only obvious that the soldiers were robbed.
Nevertheless, there were no mitigating circumstances for the soldier’s action, and he was sent to a construction battalion (hard labor) for the maximum term for this crime – six years.
Lunch and dinner confirmed our worst concerns: all the food was tasteless, the aluminum dishes were covered with grease, and the smells were nauseating. The guys were excitedly looking for a way out of this situation…
First of all, many found local residents nearby who had undertaken to store civilian clothes for money. Others hid civilian clothes in Lenin’s room – our company’s club room. And only a few, like me, for various reasons (discipline, lack of money, perseverance) had handed over clothes until going back home and played a new game called “military camps”.
The next morning we were awakened by heart-rending screams,
“All rise, all rise! This is the army, not daddy’s house! Quickly down, line up!”
The screams came from a tall, dark-haired ensign in a rakishly angled cap. The students dressed lazily and went down to the parade ground in front of the barracks. Despite the early morning, the sun was mercilessly beating down. The ensign lined up his company against the sun, and smiling slyly, said,
“My last name is Shityan. I don’t give a damn what will you call me among yourselves. When you approach me, address me – Comrade Ensign. Whoever makes a mistake will regret it! I will bring discipline to you! I promise, I do it without any assault and battery – you’ll stand in the sun until your blood flows from…” and he listed all the orifices of the body.
“And now, listen to my command, take off your panama hats!” he commanded.
Everyone took off their panama hats. Most, but not all of the students had cut their hair short at home.
“Are there hairdressers among you?” asked the ensign, “Three steps forward!”
“Yes sir!” two or three students-physics immediately accepted the terms of this absurd game and stepped forward.
“Bring three stools and a broom from the barracks. Three minutes to execute. Those who are late will go to the guardhouse!”
The ensign noted the time, and the students, cursing their activity, rushed to the third floor. The soldier just brought a package and laid it at the ensign’s feet. The returning “hairdressers” found antediluvian mechanical hair clippers in it, and the execution began. Fifteen minutes later, the screaming experimental subjects, amid the laughter of the crowd, refused further torture, and the returning soldier-hairdresser cut off the remnants of their hair.
At a quarter to eight, the ensign decided that the morning tan would be enough for now, and ordered everyone with short haircut to make their beds, wash themselves, and run to the diner for breakfast. The rest should come after the haircut if they have time left.
“Those who haven’t had their haircut won’t eat! Those who haven’t made their beds – the tour of duty before others!”
What kind of duty, where – no one knew, but no one expected anything good from this mentor. So we hurried. That’s when the pioneer camp training came in handy – making the bed at speed!
Less than half of the students came to the cafeteria. Yesterday’s breakfast experience came in handy. We operated: we scooped out with a ladle the smelly brown liquid fat from the pans into empty bowls, then removed the top layer that was in contact with the brown liquid, and then the snow-white surface of pure millet porridge was exposed. It had to be put as a mountain in a dirty aluminum bowl and, having spoon carefully wiped out, eat a crater out of this mountain without touching the walls of the dish. There was more butter per capita today, since half as many students showed up for the breakfast. In a word, we’ve managed it so far.
And what happened to those who did not come to the dining room? They had breakfast outside the gates of the military unit, in a diner owned by a local farmer. The owner immediately realized that the soldiers in a strange uniform, more like a fire brigade, were students from blessed neighbor city – the source of blessings that God had sent to help his family. The owner’s wife and daughters, like clockwork, beat eggs, cut twisted Armenian cheese, heated flatbread, chopped tomatoes and cilantro, and poured yogurt and tea into glasses. It was a real feast of familiar home-cooked food. The prices were quite high, but the happy escapees from the army world didn’t care.
It turned out that the ensign, Comrade Shityan did care! He entered into an argument with the head of the training camp, Lieutenant-Colonel Kunin, who was defending his students. The ensign believed that violating the regulations would reduce the discipline of the cadets, and the lieutenant-colonel did not see anything wrong with the fact that the “soldier” would be well fed, even at his own expense. Both opinions were based on specific circumstances.
Although a military man, Kunin was a university teacher, with its connections and traditions, and preferred to observe them rather than the dubious rules of military training.
The ensign knew well from the basics of Marxism that any power gives benefits and tried not to miss them. In the end, he received his bribe from the diner keeper, to whom he explained that he could not break himself in halves and take some students to the army cafeteria and others to the civilian trattoria. Therefore, he will forbid the cadets from visiting the tavern, unless…
“What’s a problem?” said the farmer, “If you bring cadets, I’ll feed you for free; if you send them alone, I’ll compensate you with money.”
The owner of the diner had a great understanding of both business and people. They shook hands. The ensign never ate at a tavern with students.
In just two days there was a stratification into the poor, who ate in the army canteen, and the rich, who ate in the tavern, and a bunch of people in between, but this was not what determined the optimists and pessimists.
Soon all the students experienced the ensign’s educational techniques first-hand. He gave punishments for all sorts of nonsense, but not with the typical army physical exercises until exhaustion. He didn’t want to offend anyone at all. He appointed a regimental guardhouse, which he forgave for five rubles a day. The guardhouse was a stinking barn, where huge rats the size of cats scurried and snorted in the corners. Everyone was afraid of them. Rats spotted in the yard were killed with stones and bricks. The rats lived behind the parade ground, in the sewer of a one-story toilet, where no one usually entered at night, much less without boots. And during the day, sitting above the funnel, you had to carefully look at who was crawling under you, sniffling and trying to bite your flesh.
Most of the students quickly bought their way out of the barn. It was like a typical relationship with the traffic police. The policeman stopped the car and explained what was wrong. Either the driver paid the bribe immediately or received a punishment. For three punishments, the driver license was taken away and you was forced to retake exams. In a word, it was easier to pay, except in cases where the driver was sure that the policeman had made a mistake in the rules, but this happened extremely rarely. Still, they were professionals in the rules of movement, just as the ensign was the professional in the army regulations, unlike us.
Later we encountered the development of the guardhouse business. One of our students received a punishment of five days in guardhouse, but he wasn’t in the barn. He returned rested and refreshed. According to the initial version, he was transferred to the city guardhouse, but this explanation did not stand up to criticism. The boss there was a well-known sadist, he didn’t feed soldiers, he made them run in circles until they were fully exhausted, he could set soldiers on and beat any prisoner. In short, Temuri admitted that he paid double and spent five days at home, in his city.
One morning I received a day of arrest in the regiment, but, realizing that this was only a gut-check, and not a well-deserved punishment, I asked the ensign,
“Please tell Lieutenant-Colonel Kunin that I’m in the guardhouse, in case General Grozdyev comes looking for me.”
The ensign looked at me, in his own words, “like Lenin at the bourgeoisie” and said something in Armenian, sending both the cadets and the generals to the same “vorot” (in Russian it’s a gate, in Armenian it’s an ass). But the mine was laid. An hour or two later, having handed over the company to Kunin for training, he asked,
“What does General Grozdyev have to do with Cadet Neiman?”
“They publish posters for radiation training. Why do you ask?”
“No, no, nothing, just checking if it was true?”
“Yes it’s true. When I found out, I also didn’t believe it at first.”
“Okay, Neiman will arrive now, he was carrying out my instructions.”
We spent most of our time in classes with our teachers-officers. We were shown real long-distance communication stations – trucks stuffed with equipment. We were amazed how anyone could entrust such a machine to a lieutenant like us? We knew practically nothing, neither how they work nor how to fix something if it breaks. The only role of such a vehicle commander was to order the sergeant and two privates, who knew some basics in pressing buttons. Many understood that in the event of a war, the extra-conscripts will cause significant damage to their own army. What about career officers?
In the regiment, our student company was assigned four officers: the commander – the head of the regiment’s chemical service, captain Kruglevsky and three lieutenants – commanders of three platoons. The captain was a real military bone – lean, tall, and knowing his specialty.
“Gogoladze, what will you do in the event of a nuclear explosion?”
“I’ll take a horizontal position.”
“It’s right. How will you lie, on your back or on your stomach?”
“…Uh …I’ll lie on my back, Comrade Captain.”
“Yeah! Just to see how your balls had departed!”
Young lieutenants commanded our three platoons. One lieutenant continuously told stories about his station, like following.
“Imagine guys, I mistakenly switch the DS toggle from P2 to P1, got sit on the wave of the commander of the exercises and hear how officers fuck the woman radio operator in turn at the re-reception point.”
“And what did you do?”
“I listened until private Ivashchenko started jerking off, then I switched off.”
“Why didn’t you let the man cum?”
“No way! Even without it the entire floor of the station was spit and littered…”
Another lieutenant constantly bragged about how many women he had sex with, and showed his notebook with a list of nationalities as a proof. His stories went like this:
“When I took her by the breast, the Uzbek woman shuddered, the Russian woman screamed, the Ukrainian woman moaned, and when I spread her legs, the Georgian woman sighed, the Jewish woman cried, the Armenian woman breathed deep, and so on.
We kept trying to find some kind of pattern in his interethnic copulations, but apart from what a silent partner he is, nothing worked. We asked him:
“Have you, Gena, ever produced any sound?”
“What are you saying guys?” he said, “I can’t, I’m an officer!”
The commander of my platoon was a frail little guy named Leshchenko, originally from near Rostov. His stories boiled down to heroic wall-to-wall battles on Sundays and holidays. He said:
“You Georgians are peaceful people. I fought 63 times in my life and broke my opponent’s head 4 times: with a log, a board, a stake and a club.”
“Didn’t you feel sorry for the people, Alexey?”
“If only you could take a look at them, they’re not people, they’re spitting images of killers. They could strangle me with their bare hands.”
But overall he was a very peaceful and modest guy, a couple of years older than we were.
The ensigns were a separate caste in the regiment. As a rule, these were people who were hired for at least five years to work in the army. They were assigned a rank intermediate between soldiers (privates and sergeants) and command (officers). They wore an officer’s uniform, and received a salary lower than officers, but higher than civilians in the army. But… they knew all the entrances and exits. As a rule, they were local and were well versed in the life that surrounded the walls of the military unit. They stole military property and sold it to civilians. The ensign, the head of the catering department, carried the meat out of the kitchen every day. One day our students openly asked him if he was afraid to carry meat, sometimes an entire leg from the carcass. He was terribly surprised by this question.
“Who do you think the meat goes to? – Senior commanders! Or you believe that my children do not want meat? They want it three times a day!”
By the food, we immediately realized that the soldiers were being robbed. Perhaps in other regiments they were robbed less, but in this one – entirely. And the soldiers found their ways. They took away and ate food of the weak and newcomers (offending newcomers was called hazing), stole everything that was in bad shape, for example, from objects they protected, and earned extra money wherever possible. The commanders lent their soldiers for work (they called it – helping the population), where the soldiers were at least decently fed.
During our happy fifty days, we witnessed an audit of the unit. They opened the warehouses and discovered a horrific shortage. Half-empty grocery stocks are understandable and natural. Empty storages for uniforms are not great, although our ensign just chuckled,
“Winter sheepskin coats with light blue fur don’t last long in storages! Panama hats and overalls too.”
But the most terrible thing, from the point of view of civilians, was the looted stocks of weapons: heavy machine guns, Kalashnikovs, grenade launchers, boxes of cartridges, grenades and all kinds of ammunition. Who knows how many people died because of someone’s greed!
But none of the authorities were harmed. The auditors were bribed and they signed the proper papers. And we remembered the poor soldier who was convicted on the first day.
One day, immediately after getting up, the alarm sounded in the regiment. They lined everyone up, soldiers and students, in one row at the stadium. The duty officer walked ahead, two sergeants behind him were leading by the arms of a rather ugly woman of about forty, with a black face smeared with fuel oil. The officer announced that an hour earlier, a gang rape of this woman had been committed on the territory of the unit. To keep her from screaming, the soldiers dipped her face into a puddle of fuel oil near the garage. And now the identification will take place.
The woman was slowly led along the line. The students joked nervously:
“Hold on, now this scarecrow will identify someone!”
It was clear that she was not a random pre-dawn tourist on the territory of a military unit, but a cheap prostitute who had been lured and deceived by the soldiers, and now, out of revenge or self-interest, she would hit the jackpot from anyone.
But the woman didn’t recognize anyone. Then she asked the duty officer:
“Can they all show their dicks?”
“No!” the duty officer snapped, “Identification goes by faces, not by balls!”
“And if I were completely blind, they still wouldn’t allow it?”
“I would allow you to touch and feel their faces.”
“Oh, well, yes, scrotums grow on their faces…”
The officer on duty became angry.
“Madam… err … citizen! We are helping you to find the rapists and bring them to justice, but instead of gratitude, you are dissatisfied.”
“I don’t need their trial. Let them pay money as they promised.”
After these words, the procedure was stopped and everyone was dismissed from the stadium. As we later found out, the woman was given food from the kitchen, and she signed a document that she had no complaints against the N-military unit and members of it personnel.
That day even I went to a tavern for lunch. I knew that using the blame on the woman, the kitchen manager would steal everything eatable this day. And sure enough, the meat and even the lard completely disappeared from the pans.
Unexpected encounters happened sometimes in the regiment.
In the early days I discovered the library. A small room with three or four tables and bookshelves had its own boss. Head the library was a pimply soldier with glasses. The literature on the shelves consisted of a soldier’s and sergeant’s collections (about brave border guards and all sorts of spies), some classics and subscriptions to newspapers and magazines.
“Is there anything interesting?” I asked just to clear my conscience.
“Do you want porn?” suggested the soldier.
“Of course,” I agreed, wondering what I would get.
It turned out to be a well-read issue of the magazine “Foreign Literature” with Updike’s novel “Run, Rabbit, Run.”
Once I met a young lieutenant Denis Seryogin, who was drafted into the army for two years after graduating a university. He served in the neighboring infantry regiment in Kanaker. Denis showed me a school notebook filled in with primitive and dirty curses. For example, on the first page, in three columns, twenty times each, and a total of sixty times was written “fuck your mother.”
“Is this your diary?” I asked, getting a little scared.
Denis burst out laughing.
“Not really. I’m not out of my mind. This is the result of an experiment by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, repeated in Soviet conditions. I’m bringing this notebook to show to the political officer of the regiment.”
And he told me the following story.
While serving in the army, Count Tolstoy decided to wean soldiers from dirty swearing. He knew that no orders or punishments would help, and decided to act by example. He invented his own “language” and, on appropriate occasions, shouted absolutely senseless sentences, something like this,
“Skim your kuna and wort with pocks, fact not a key pact!”
The soldiers froze in horror, not understanding the meaning, but feeling the power of the word. Unfortunately, the experiment was interrupted due to the transfer of Lieutenant Tolstoy to Crimea. His place was taken by a new officer who was a notorious swearer. On the very first day, he carried the soldiers to God-faith-soul mother, thinking to make an impression, but the village guys only laughed,
“Eh, your honor! Count Tolstoy made such swear twists before you! Your words even no match to his!”
Denis decided not to reinvent the wheel and began with Tolstoy’s phrase,
“Skim your kuna and wort with pocks, fact – a key pact!”
The soldiers, naturally, again, like a hundred years ago, did not understand a thing, but the generation was completely different, they were offended and informed the political officer of the regiment,
“Lieutenant Seryogin insults our national dignity. He calls us twisted words from our languages. If something is wrong, let him tell us directly in Russian.”
The political officer called Seryogin.
“What are you allowing yourself to do in the Soviet army?”
“Uh?”
“The soldiers are complaining that you insulted their national dignity by distorting the words of their language. This is fucking unacceptable! Are you lost your fucken mind from the service?”
“Uh… Comrade Lieutenant-Colonel, I simply said, “Skim your kuna and wort with pocks, fact – a key pact!” Like Count Tolstoy did.”
“Lieutenant Seryogin, you said, “Sekim your kunem voret with pokh, fuck and kippah!” Do not fuck with me or Count Tolstoy! In Azerbaijan sekim means fuck, pokh means shit, in Armenian, kunem means fuck, voret means ass! And in what hangover did you fuck a Jewish kippah? Did you forgot how to swear in Russian? I’ll remind you! Take a notebook and write! On the first page “fuck your mother,” on the second…”
And he dictated the expressions for all twenty-four pages.
“Fill out the entire notebook in three columns at home, and show it to me. And you’ll scold and swear these fucking idiots only with written down expressions! Clear? Fulfill!”
Our ensign, apparently for educational purposes, and perhaps to supplement his income, came up with a system of work assignments, from which one could be bought off. First of all, these were works at the kitchen. The motivation in the case of the kitchen was correct: since the students do not like the cleanliness of the catering unit, let them restore order there.
I was among the first ten students sent for such a workload.
“What a big deal,” we reasoned, “Didn’t we wash the dishes before?”
But it turned out to be more difficult than we imagined.
Firstly, the boiler did not work well and did not provide boiling water.
“Rejoice,” said the soldier cook, “half of you would have been scalded!”
Secondly, aluminum bowls, coated with a layer of fat, could not be washed in soapy water; also they slipped terribly. No matter the bowls, we ourselves slid on the kitchen floor as if on ice.
“To hell with the floor,” the students-physics decided, “but we’ll wash the bowls!”
We chipped in, bought baking soda, and work began to boil. No, we didn’t make it in time for breakfast, but by lunchtime the bowls and spoons sparkled like new. The soldiers in the canteen were amazed that this was a holiday or a test, and would they not be fed humanly in this regard? But their expectations weren’t met. Moreover, ours too. After lunch, the bowls were again covered with a layer of filthy compound fat that hardened like stearin.
In the evening we faced a new problem: washing the boilers. Huge waist-deep boilers were built into the stove and did not turn over. They washed them like this: the soldier climbed inside and kicked the inner surface of the cauldron from burnt pieces of porridge from breakfast and cabbage with lard from lunch. (For dinner they served fish, which was simmered on aluminum plates packed in racks in the same cauldron). Pieces of food knocked off the walls were scooped out, then a portion of water was poured in from the hose and scooped out again. The procedure was repeated until the liquid at the bottom of the boiler seemed clear. The other one, the tea pot, was not washed at all. Its walls were black from constant brewing of tea.
It became clear to me once again that Ethel Greenberg, who moved to Israel, was right, and that it was not the boiler or the dishes that needed to be changed, but the entire system as a whole!
One day we were gathered in Lenin’s room. The regiment’s political commander came to give us a special lecture for officers.
“No notes, confidential information!” he warned.
We were intrigued. Probably it would be about new weapons! We are still physicists, you can tell us, and we will understand and appreciate.
“Do you know the monument to the soldier-liberator with a German girl in his arms?” he asked, “How often do you think this happened?”
We were discouraged. How do we know?
“Extremely rarely,” said the political officer, “But they often destroyed the civilian population and raped them. And not because Russians are beasts, but because a soldier of any army becomes a beast. Every officer should know that the hardships of army life, designed to toughen a soldier, sometimes cause unusual behavior. Moreover, the officer must be able to react to this! The topic of today’s lecture is sexual crimes in the army.”
For an hour and a half, without moving, we listened to a lecture on the rise of homosexuality and pederasty in the Soviet army, with detailed descriptions of individual cases in which there was cruelty and severe suppression of the individual. New drafted soldiers beaten by old served soldiers, covered in urine, smeared with sperm and excrement, were hanged themselves or thrown themselves out of windows, but sometimes they met the offenders with gunfire. And I mentally ran with them from this, changing ammo on the move. Prison and the army were breathing down the neck of my young life…
However, most of the time, cheerfulness prevailed. I suffered little from the training camp, perceiving everything as a sort of a game. However, many of my friends were very worried. They felt defenseless in the face of all kinds of oppressors. And on the day the training camp ended, early in the morning they left home by bus, although in this case they had to buy the ticket themselves and sweat all day in a hot car without air conditioning.
I think that many people’s tension was caused by the very atmosphere in the army unit: theft, oppression, inequality and, ultimately, the struggle for existence, where the strong can abuse the weak.
(Continuation of “50 days” is following)
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