I am free to write here because there are no cameras. There must be no record of what happens here. I know that no-one leaves this place alive so while I have writing materials I am going to write as much as I can and then hide it.
I am free to write here because there are no cameras. There must be no record of what happens here. I know that no-one leaves this place alive so while I have writing materials I am going to write as much as I can and then hide it in the hope that one day, when this terrible place is being torn down, a worker in the free Russia will discover what I have set down.
I was a student in Moscow but I must have said the wrong thing to the wrong person because they came for me. A man in a suit and two uniformed KGB came into the room where we were having a discussion with our tutor. The man said my name and the uniforms grabbed me, handcuffed my hands behind me and dragged me out in full view of everyone. As they pulled me down the front steps I saw everyone turning their heads the other way so as not to see. They forced me into the back of a GAZ vehicle with the two uniforms on either side and they pulled a hood over my head. As we drove, they kept bumping against my body as we rounded corners and I felt hands pawing my breasts and between my legs just to make the point that I belonged to them now and they could do anything they wanted to do to me. But the true horror had not even begun.
It seemed a very long drive and being hooded is disorientating and humiliating which is why they do it; I felt very hot and was scared that I would faint or be sick or both. Eventually we arrived – somewhere – and I was pulled out of the truck and frog marched into a building with lots of echoing sound – shouting, doors clanging, keys rattling. My hood was whipped off and I was in a medium sized room with all the walls painted in Soviet institution green. I was facing a hard-faced bitch in a KGB uniform. She looked like a man. Both the guards I had seen before were behind me and had drawn their batons.
She barked at me that my handcuffs would be removed and I would immediately strip completely. The cuffs were taken off and I felt very exposed even with my clothes on. What could I do but obey? I undid my blouse and cast it off placing it on the wooden table beside me then, trying not to look at anyone, I removed my shoes and socks. So far so almost harmless but now I had to unfasten and slide down my smart skirt, the one I kept for college. I was just in rather old, frayed and faded white bra and pants. I felt my lip turn inwards as I took off my bra and felt chill air on my small breasts. Looking up for a second, I saw that the bitch was staring at me and almost certainly fantasizing about what she would like to do. I felt the men’s presence behind me. Now I bent and slipped my pants down and off feeling my dark pubic hair exposed. I placed my hands in front of me and she screamed at me.
“Hands by your sides.”
She nodded to the guards and one of them grabbed my arm painfully and yanked me to one side of the room where he forced me down onto a wooden chair and told me to keep still. It was horrifying to see him pick up a large pair of scissors from a table and then he began to hack at my hair. Tears were silently running down my cheeks as I saw great hanks of my hair land on the floor. He did not shave my head but it seemed that long hair was not permitted. Of course, I had no idea what I looked like but I could imagine the very rough job that he had done and I felt the draught around my ears.
“Arms up.”
What? My brain was fuddled but my left wrist was grabbed and pulled high above my head exposing my armpit. The guard took an old fashioned cut throat razor from a small bowl of water and shaved both armpits in turn but it turned out that this was merely the beginning.
Without a word, I was yanked out of the chair and pushed down across a wooden table. One of them dragged my legs wide apart and I saw the one with the razor at the foot of the table.
“You can move if you want to but this blade is very sharp.”
I closed my eyes and clenched my fists as I felt the metal dragged over my most personal area. He was very thorough and then he used his fat, hot hands to clear away any remaining hair which had stuck to the damp skin.
“Stand Up. Eyes shut. Arms above your head. Get your legs apart.”
The whole process is designed to make you compliant and to break your spirit. I heard the shooshing sound and felt the chemical as it was shot at my body. He was using one of those things which are used in greenhouses to spray for parasites and it had the same function here. I wished that I could tell him that I take showers and there was no need for what he was doing. I wondered if I would ever take another shower but I was sure that my apartment was already being cleared out ready to be assigned to someone else.
Then the hood once again came down over my head and hands on my arms steered me along echoing passageways and upstairs. Lots more rattling and clanging and the sound of heavy boots on hard floors and the hood was dragged off so that I could see that I was outside of a small, dark cell. A hand in the small of my back shoved me forward and the door slammed shut followed by the sound of keys and bolts.
My cell was about six feet by six and an iron bed took up one wall with a thin, off-white mattress. A dim electric bulb shone weakly from a translucent glass dome in the ceiling and there was a white painted metal bucket in one corner. There was no window. I lay on the bed and curled into a ball of misery.
When they came for me, they stood in the hallway and barked at me to go to them so I walked unsteadily out of my cell, still naked, and the hood came down over my head. We walked along corridors and ended up in another dimply lit room and my hood was removed. A man in civilian clothes sat behind a desk with another off to one side at another smaller desk where he took notes. A much larger man in military trousers and shirt grabbed hold of me and handcuffed me in front then he raised my hands and secured the cuffs to an overhead winch which was operated by a handle fixed to the wall. He gave the wheel half a turn and I was struggling to keep my toes in contact with the floor.
The man behind the desk had a deep voice and a coarse Muscovite accent as if he had come from the gutter. He told me that I was here for spreading subversion at college and that they needed a full list of my fellow students and tutors together with a score of how loyal or otherwise they were to the state. They also needed a list of all western sources which had influenced me in terms of books, films or personal contacts.
I tried to blurt out that they had the wrong person. I was a loyal student who hoped to graduate and serve the Soviet people. That was when a long cane whizzed through the air and landed across both my exposed buttocks. Desk man said that his colleague had been looking forward to hurting me and would keep doing it but would stop for as long as I was giving information.
And so, the caning had begun. The big man moved around me to be sure of equally scarring back, thighs, breasts, buttocks and belly. The force of the blows meant that I could not keep my toes on the floor and, as my legs involuntarily thrashed about, my body swung in all directions putting terrible strain on my arms. Desk man kept asking questions and throwing names at me.
What did this tutor teach?
What did he tell you about his time in London?
Did he ever sell you black market goods?
What did this student talk to you about when you met socially?
Did this tutor ever try to molest you?
Did you give sexual favors for grades?
He kept switching subjects and I was almost too hysterical to speak or deny the implications in his questions. There was a hose lying on the floor attached to a tap and, when I became incoherent, the man with the cane would put down his cane and spray me from close up with freezing water. Often, he would concentrate on my face so that I felt I was swallowing or inhaling water and almost drowning or he would point it at my breasts or groin where the water pressure felt as if I were being punched.
At one point we had a sort of interlude when Desk Man stood in front of me and held a beaker of water for me to drink. He asked if I would like some bread and I said yes because I had not eaten at all since being arrested. Bread, it seemed, could be bought by giving just one name of a traitor to the state but I had no names to give so I stayed hungry.
Desk Man said that his patience was wearing thin and he asked if I wanted to be left alone with the big man so that he could do as he liked with me. I shook my head in fear and he, quite gently, asked me about my Russian History teacher. I answered truthfully that I did not like this man and he often made jokes about The Party as if he were tempting us to join in with him. That led to follow up questions.
What sort of jokes?
How many students laughed?
Did Dimitri laugh?
Did Olga laugh?
Once you had begun, you lost track of what you had said.
And then I was back in my cell. I was never brought food or water in my cell but these things could be “bought” during interrogations in exchange for information.
I cannot give you a coherent account of my interrogations and I probably have the order wrong but I am giving you the parts which I recall as I recall them.
On one occasion I was being brought back from interrogation and my hood was removed in the corridor. This had never happened before and I saw strip lighting above me and cream-colored metal doors to both sides of me. The paint was badly chipped and scraped. A nude woman was being led past us and we had to stand to one side so that she and her two guards could pass us. The woman wore a leather hood which was laced around her neck. She also wore a broad leather belt which had a handcuff on each side so that her wrists were cuffed to her waist. Both men wore leather aprons and one of them had a pistol butt protruding from the back of his belt. We watched them turn into a stairwell and go downwards. I knew that nothing was allowed to happen here by chance so they had wanted me to witness this, to draw my own conclusions and to think about it during my long solitary hours in my cell.
Sometimes I was so hungry or so desperate for the pain to stop that I had to tell them something. I tried lying but I could not fool them and any attempt would cause them to slap me hard about the face or to lash the whip or cane up between my legs. On other occasions they would punish me by forcing a pillow over my face and holding it in place so that I was sure that I would be asphyxiated; at the last possible moment they would take the pillow away leaving me gasping and choking and then they would repeat the question.
I recall a time when I admitted to meeting a woman from the British Embassy in a bar. She was only a clerk, not a spy but then they wanted details. How did it come about that I just happened to be in that bar at the same time as her? I had not thought it through and my attempt at claiming that it was a chance meeting did not convince them. I was determined not to give the name of my fellow student who had taken me there that night so I stuck to my false story.
Desk man kept repeating his questions but when I refused to divulge any more, he suggested that myself and Big Man should go to another room and, “get to know each other better”.
I could not believe that it could all be so calm and clinical as Big Man freed me from the winch, twisted my arm behind me and dragged me out of the door and down the corridor. We entered a small room with padded walls and floor and he threw me down so that I sprawled on my face. To my horror, he was grinning and removing his boots and trousers.
And then he was upon me, spinning me over onto my back and coming down on me with all his weight. He spat in my face as I felt his erect member between my intimate lips and he just rammed in causing me to howl in pain. The rape was repeated over and again then I was on my face with my nose pressed into the rubber floor so that I struggled for breath. He handled me as if I had no weight at all and he raised my buttocks upwards so that he could use me in any and all ways that he chose. As he thrust into me, he was shouting at the top of his sergeant major voice.
“Give me the name. Who took you to the bar?”
It had become a point of honor that I had already given them all I would give and I would not betray my friend from that night. He had torn my flesh further than it was meant to go and there was blood on the rubber floor and on his shaft but still it continued. At some point he had me up on my knees and his salty, sweaty organ was filling my mouth and touching the back of my throat so that I thought I would choke without giving him the name that he wanted. But he was good at his despicable trade and he kept me just this side of the final veil. He was still screaming his questions at me and, while his genital was active, his hands were twisting and squeezing my breasts as if he would rip them off and then his fist would fill my intimate cavity and repeatedly withdraw and reenter. You reach a point where you think the back of your head must explode due to sheer sensory overload and whatever will or determination you have is simply drained away. I found that I was now the one doing the screaming.
“It was Svetlana. We were both there that night. She invited me.”
I think a point was reached where they had pretty much all I had to tell but they would keep re visiting the same subject and asking for more detail or explanation. You couldn’t lie at this point because you could not remember exactly what you had said but they had it all in short hand notes from the little clerk at his table in the corner of the room. After minimal food, I was very weak and my brain felt muzzy so that I could not think or plot to mislead them. All I had was the truth and, by this time, it came out automatically.
I believe they knew that I had little more to offer so they were less concerned about keeping me in one piece; my value had decreased in line with the small amount which I had left to give.
Any hesitation or ambiguity in my answers would lead to a hard punch in the stomach or a crashing blow to the side of my head so that I spun around on the end of the chain from which I was suspended. A hard baton would slam into any available part of me as it spun past them.
There was one time when
The narrative breaks off at this point. We assume that the still unknown writer was interrupted perhaps by the sound of her cell being unlocked so she had to hide her work. What you have been reading is an English tran*********** of crumpled handwritten pages found behind a loose brick in a building being demolished in 1993 near Moscow.