| Len's cousin
Making wedges
Len: When we were walking, you were telling me about some of the bribery that was going on. It was when you were near the White Sea.
M: Oh! [laughs]. That's right. When the sent us to Siberia, so in the winter... They tried to find for us jobs what to do. So they had to make some wedges, in order to keep logs together, because there was no ways or means to keep it. There, if you needed a nail, they used to send us out to find old wire...
Len: Barbed wire.
M: Barbed wire, and cut it up and make nails. And this was already then 20-25 years old, since the Revolution. This was in 1940, the Revolution was in 1918. So, they used to be rusted, people used to get cut, it used to get infected to their hands. It was terrible. But that was the job, to make nails.
Anyway, these fellows had to make some wedges, and they had a quota to make 100 a day. And there is no way that two elderly people could make 100 wedges. They would be.. The most experienced person couldn't do it. So, they tried and tried, and they couldn't make it. So, they went in to the master of the works there and they told him. He was a fine man, you know. He was a member of the Communist party, but he was a real nice fellow. So, they told him "Look," Kisilev was his name. So they said, "Look, Kisilev, we can't make it. We tried and we tried. There is no way we could."
So, he said, "OK. You go do as much as you can, and don't worry about it anymore. Just don't worry. Do the best you can." Well these guys went, they could make 10, 12, they make 15 maybe. But that's all they could do, so they did it. And a whole winter, the girl who was counting it was writing down that they made 100 a day.
On the end of he season, when spring came, according to the office, they should have had thousands, tens of thousands of these wedges. And one other office up the river was short of it. They didn't have it. So, they sent a boat to load up and bring the excess wedges that we had. When they came in there was no wedges, you know. We used up already ours that we need, for these bridges that we made ourselves, and there was none.
And all of a sudden, there was an investigation. How come? The office says there is thousands of them, and you haven't got it. It's fraud, you know. What's going on? And there came a few bigshots, came in from the capital city, they started investigating.
Anyway, the girl confessed. She said, "The master told me to write down 100. I don't know how much they make. He told me not to count, even." Well, they called him in, and of course they put him on the carpet. He told us afterwards, that the only reason he got out of it is because he was a member of the Communist party. Otherwise, they would have shot him.
Len: Didn't he tell them something about, "Have somebody come in from Moscow..."
M: Yes. As a matter of fact, that's what he told them, really. He told them, "If Moscow believes that anybody could make 100, let somebody come who wrote down this rule, this quota. Let him come and show them how to make 100. But these people are honest working people, but they couldn't do it." "But" he said, "field it [phonetic]". They wouldn't let him off, you see, for doing it. But the only reason he got off it was because he was a member of the Communist Party. |
