CHAPTER EIGHT - New Year 1950 in a stolipinski wagon

CHAPTER EIGHT - New Year 1950 in a stolipinski wagon

Dobrin perked up his ears when he felt Strogov’s breath behind him, wanting to give him a pencil and a few blank sheets of paper. So far he had not spoken to anyone about this and he was feeling angry and bitter. He felt like the entire world lived in some kind of contamination chamber, being there to be probed, to be examined, to be blamed, to have its scabby wounds opened and to even die as unworthy. Strogov’s request to talk about it now made him furious and he did not want to start, he stared at Strogov sinking into the armchair, probably feeling some trepidation in his veins, and as his friend Kandikian used to say: “If the crown on the right side of your head vibrated, then you would find yourself in front of a judge, and if your chin vibrated then you would be getting advice...”

At one point Dobrin’s mind wandered back to the piled up heaps of facts, in history, but not because of the benevolence of Lawrence Beria and Joseph Goebbels, but because of the evil they created. Of those two inspirers and organizers of a system of physical and spiritual control of two “revolutionary” countries, one was the father of the Gulag and the Soviet bomb, and the other covered genocide with a fig leaf. Now, Strogov was asking Dobrin to describe the Gulag for him. “Oh, my Siberian gulags, that dead bed in the world!” Dobrin thought to himself.

They again made Dobrin scream in the silence, in the silence of the fiercest Gulag!

Shortly before midnight in 1950, on his way to Moscow somewhere before Kiev, sitting in a stolipinski wagon, Dobrin was dreaming about a lofty tribune of white marble, under an open sky. Four monumental columns rose high skyward in the four corners of the palace. The moon was full and from it emanated light with a pinkish tinge shining everywhere, even in the distant horizon, and reflected back from the human faces and eyes of the crowd in the forum facing him.

He dreamt standing there and holding a tablet in his hands, like that of Moses and the Ten Commandments, but this tablet was framed and under glass with text divided into two columns. The first was

directed at the Macedonian people, but it could have been directed at the entire world. Dobrin read the text with an unusually strong voice.

He suddenly woke up; perhaps he heard his own voice.

His big brother did not hear him. He was deafened by the noise of the triumphant achievement of socialism, the noise of champagne, but all Dobrin could hear was tic-tac, tic-tac, tic-tac, which made him feel even colder and shrinking from the cold. He felt like the iron all around him was sucking the heat out of him.

It was a cold, frosty day, the snow was crunchy and Dobrin was curled up like a hedgehog. Every muscle in his body was shivering. Parked about ten metres away from the wagon was a black prison car. Unexpectedly, Dobrin found himself tied up like a mummy and tossed in a box. He felt like screaming... “My God,” he said to himself, “it feels like they are squeezing the life out of me. Here I am in my own homeland and they are about to judge me?!”

It was dark, pitch black but with his knees and back he could feel the metal walls. Right in front of his nose was a small rectangular opening for breathing. Not even savage beasts deserve this kind of treatment, never mind people.

The prison car was sliding all over the place, moving slowly and unsteadily through the streets of Moscow. It was hellishly cold in the box. Dobrin said to himself, “If this cold continues like this they will find a frozen mummy in this box with frozen thoughts from a different time...”

But eventually the car arrived at Lefortov prison. Two muscular guards pulled Dobrin out of the box and escorted him into a building, one leading and the other following right behind. They took a few steps down stairs, walked down a long corridor with many doors on both sides and stopped in front of number 513. The guard in front unlocked the door and slowly opened it while watching Dobrin’s eyes. It was a heavy black door probably made of oak. It was ten centimetres thick and reinforced with iron hoops.

The guard behind him pushed Dobrin into the cell and locked the door behind him. Dobrin said to himself: “So, this is the room I earned in the land of Socialism.” This was a room where mornings began without nights and where fear and uncertainty were rampant...

The cell was almost square, about two metres wide and slightly over two metres long. It was about three metres high with thick walls. On the ceiling opposite the door there was a small hole reinforced with yellowish glass. Sometimes through the day the hole opened on its own. Air from the outside flowed inside leaping like a snake and carrying the smell somewhere away from Moscow.

The cell was dark, especially when it was cloudy outside. When it turned dark outside the hanging lamp, suspended from the ceiling like a strangled rat, came on. Dobrin thought to himself that being in here he would no longer be able to see the sun rise. It was like all the stars in his soul had died... The cell was very cold. There was no window from which to see land or sky, people or birds. His heart still beat regularly and evenly in the charred nights. He measured the length of the battlefield. There was no commitment, no laughter, except the laughter of the powerful over the weak.

Dobrin stood two steps away from the door. A strong odour of old sour dirt, sweat, semen, nails, hairs and saliva from clotted blood hit his nose. It was all mixed with the smell of rot coming from the old bedcover which perhaps was still protecting the fear of some warrier from the wars. The wound in his broken heart began to open and his soul was filling with ash, desolation and silence...

There elongated shadows of his ancestors were not there. Everything was collected in a single dot, even the meaning of every campaign was covered with a slave’s robe...

Clearly worn out on the floor, on the opposite wall towards the little yellow hole substituting for a window, was a tiny path. This is where Dobrin’s predecessor probably paced back and forth.

He would turn at the sink on the left wall and go towards the hole of the toilet. It was immediately next to him in the left corner. Beyond there the floor looked like it was covered with some sort of gray

carpet. The layer was thick and laden with hairs and dust... A narrow bed with rusty feet dug into the floor was resting along the right wall. And here, next to Dobrin was a small wooden folding table and a wooden tripod stool. So, here he was expected to sleep and eat on the right side and piss and shit on the left side and to clean his butt with his bare hands, and if he wanted he could wash it off with cold water that flowed out of a rusty pipe. Dobrin also had a bit more floor space in the middle of the cell between the sink and the bed where he could take a of couple steps forward and couple back just like his predecessor had, who secretly withered and disappeared like dry grass...

Every morning they gave Dobrin a broom, a basin and a cloth (torn underwear). The very first day he cleaned the floor and found out that it was paved. After that, every day he washed the floor and the high walls using his stool to climb on. Because of that Dobrin was probably treated a bit nicer than his predecessor who had lived in the dirt... One of the guards told him that he was a lunatic. General Nikita Igorovich Grnenko was his name and here he fought in the battlefield of loneliness.

He left staring eyes in the walls... Petrified. He talked to himself and continuously, time and time again, kept persistently repeating all the battles... and kept inflaming his soul with their fires, but no one was able to enter his hiding place...

Now Strogov demanded that Dobrin talk about the regime. Maybe it would not be too much if he told him something. Of course Dobrin was still a marked man even though the case against him and against the rest of the NOF leaders was eventually dropped. The case was dropped due to lack of evidence. The verdict was overturned because there was no evidence to support the alleged crimes committed by these individuals. They were found not guilty and were legally rehabilitated. All the humiliation, the violence against them, the pain suffered, were left hanging in the air like the light in the cell, dirty and laden with fly spatter and dust and... Without a legal basis.

This was yet another instance of “the strong being right” when they were clearly wrong and “the weak being wrong” when they had

clearly committed no crimes... But, until then, Dobrin was very naïve. He stood very close to the cruel reality of the cruel truth, which a common man could not experience in a future communist country... or any other country with such regimes in power… Attempting to stick to the truth when the truth was not wanted resulted not only in physical pain, but also in moral disarmament, spiritual torment and endless self-humiliation!

Dobrin pretended to be sleeping when three men entered his cell around midnight.

They ordered him to strip naked and stand in the corner facing the wall. Dobrin did what he was ordered and stood waiting while they deliberately, slowly did their search. Sometimes they took an hour or two, treating him as if he did not exist. They spoke to each other quietly and calmly and laughed lightly and cheerfully. Dobrin did not pay any attention to them.

Dobrin called them shadows. They did not need to be silent. These “comrades” saw him as a helpless person; sometimes they tended to show him “compassion” and exceptional “kindness”. But when they thought the prisoner would show no willingness for “cooperation”, they immediately turned into brutal beasts. Being nice to him did not work with Dobrin so they would start yelling at him: “Come here! Stretch your arms up! Separate your fingers! Turn your palms over! Show your armpits! Open your mouth and say a.a.a.a!” and so on.

They looked under his tongue, making him move it left and right. They looked between his teeth and down his throat. They looked up his nose and ears like he was a horse for sale. They ordered him to spread his legs and examined his genitals, turning them to the right then to the left. Dobrin felt both shame and fear. His genitals shrank like those of a small child. It was also because of the cold.

They ordered him to show his feet. Turn his back, bend over forward and spread his buttocks with his hands! Dobrin did not know what they were looking for… After that they left noisily, leaving Dobrin looking like Adam with his clothes and bedding tossed on the asphalt floor. For them, Dobrin was only an exhibit

and not a communist or a fighter against Anglo-American imperialism as was declared in NOF’s 1st Congress.

Dobrin tried to keep his dignity and wondered why communist views were written and proclaimed for his Macedonians? Why were these communists making promises they never intended to keep?

He was caught up in despair through the shadow of yesteryear, experiencing insomnia and restlessness deep down to his soul.

Dobrin’s interrogations began the first night he arrived. They were done regularly, but never during the day. They lasted several hours. The interrogators were changing and different each time. Dobrin was made to sit on a stool which stiffened his body. Before daybreak he was escorted back to his cell.

And as he tried to fall sleep he heard the guard yell “padiom!” and he had to get up again.

During the day he paced back and forth for hours in his two metre square cell like a nervous bear. He could not sit for too long and again he paced. He tried hard to encourage himself to “endure”. He did not want them to break him. But his torment was long and lasting...

During his insomnia he licked his wounds. He spent his nights seeming like he was lying beside a dead warrior with his eyes wide open. The warrior’s silent screams and unfelt breath blew against Dobrin’s sad eyes. Dawn was breaking giving birth to a new day...

There were also long and harsh days. They would not allow Dobrin to close his eyelids. But he still managed to get some sleep. He slept upright. He stood with legs spread, leaning on his hands against the cold wall right under the tiny window. The guard behind the door looked through the peephole and saw him standing there assuming he was awake.

Dobrin decided to put together a number of short stories with motifs of our struggle. One story, two stories, three stories... he developed in his own head because he was not allowed to have a pencil and

paper. One time he dreamt about his own grave… its walls were covered with a mosaic. It rose half a metre off the ground, close, with the cover tilted… The plate was the same but the hole in the ground was not yet dug. Grass was growing over it and it was waiting... After that Dobrin was told that the guard must now watch his face and hands while he was in bed sleeping. Since then Dobrin slept with his head toward the tiny window. The air flow was biting him like a snake. He felt thin eyelashes, secretly cutting the golden thread of his love for his fatherland. There were no magical fragrances, only rot and decay...

Once time while dreaming he turned towards the wall. The guard immediately and rudely woke him up. After that he lay there like a corpse and did not dare move. It was winter, his first winter in the land of socialism, and he had not seen the sun. The weather was mostly grim just like all the staff in Lefortovo. There was barely any daylight visible through the murky glass. Sometimes the lamp was burning all day and all night. It was strange how silence could be unbearable. There was absolutely no sound, no voice or whisper. Dobrin felt like death was creeping beside him.

Dobrin was severed from the world, isolated, blown away to some desolate place and left there to rot... And all he heard was silence. Sometimes he thought he heard a muffled cough. But then he thought it was his own blood circulating through his body, rushing through his protruding veins to put out the fire in his fireplace which was still not yet extinguished. Even though here death was chosen before its time, the words “Believe in the revolution! Believe in communism!” were never forgotten and were shouted often.

This is how time was spent sitting around the night table, under the swing of fear and silence. And boundless hope was placed in the future that smiling and bright revolutionary faces one day would emerge from all the cells... registered only by the guards who constantly peeped through the spy holes to see in what position the prisoners were sleeping.

Dobrin was possessed with wanting to see the sky and the stars during the night. His soul was flooded with unrest wishing to take a deep breath of fresh air... He asked the interrogator Firsov to move

him to another cell but did not have the courage to tell him why. He did not want to appear weak. He sat there quietly on his tool like a heroic figure sitting on top of a cliff. That night it was very cold. For a moment he dreamt that he was in Skopje slowly walking down a street. Then, as he turned, he saw members of the CPG Central Committee walking along the opposite side of the street. It looked like they had just come out of a meeting and all but three left. The three turned towards him. The one in the middle pulled out a revolver and aimed at him. He shot him the moment Dobrin turned to run. He shot him below the right shoulder blade. Dobrin felt the pain in his liver. Dobrin thought of the Gorki case when Gorki shot himself in his own chest, but did not die... The dream was very clear and realistic for Dobrin. In fact, it reminded him of the Greek leadership criticisms. The criticisms and accusations aimed directly at him… shooting him in the back. They accused him of forming NOF on April 23, 1945 in Skopje. They called him an agent of the Intelligence services, of the military police, and of all the world’s agencies. They criticized him for the speech he gave at the NOF 2nd Congress in the village Nivitsi in Prespa on March 25, 1949. In a report entitled “Ideological Foundations of NOF” he said the following: “And now, we here, hundreds of representatives of the Macedonian people, proclaim to the whole world our new core asset - the right to self-determination, the right to organize our own Macedonian national and state life the way we want it.” But all that remained of that was only on paper. Why? Later the entire NOF leadership was arrested. After that Dobrin was ashamed of being a Communist. He was ashamed of the manipulation that had been committed against the Macedonian people.

“Oh, my dear people! What is with all these games, what is with all these words? What is going to happen to us?” yelled Dobrin in silence.

“My dear God, I am your son... I remember the echo that confused my mind, it is even more confused now, especially when I heard myself screaming: ‘Believe in the revolution!’…” again Dobrin yelled in silence.

The next day, as usual, the guard went to his door and yelled “Padiom!” Dobrin was washing himself when he suddenly got a bad

headache and thought his head felt unusually heavy. It felt like his head was in a vice grip and fresh blood was spattering out of it. He thought, maybe he was wounded in the chest!

They gave him an unusually large injection in the small of his back. It hurt terribly and the pain lasted for a week. They returned him to his cell. He had a bad lung infection. After that he was allowed to cover his shoulders and hands with his blanket. But when this “compassion” ended, for the next three months they swore and cursed at him and gave him “shchi” (pickled cabbage stew) to eat in the morning, “shchi” at lunch and “shchi” in the evening. Shchi – shchi – shchi. Shchi during the first month, shchi during the second month and shchi during the third month. He only ate shchi and smelled like shchi. Every time he heard the word “shchi” he felt like vomiting. One day after he entered the second quarter of eating shchi, the terrible Lieutenant asked him: “Why do you refuse to eat the food?! Are you on a hunger strike? Are you a malicious person?”

“No! But from the tip of my toes to the top of my head, I am full of pickled cabbage. My blood is turned into cabbage stew. My body, my soul and my breath reek of spoiled cabbage. My stomach can no longer digest it. My body is giving up on it… maybe because it has ground more than a wagon full of cabbage. I can’t help it, my body is rejecting it…” replied Dobrin.

The Lieutenant smiled and said: “Nu harasho, tepper davai toliko kartoshka...” (Okay then, now we will only give you potatoes…)

And so the next day he was given a “kartoshka” (potato) in the morning, for lunch and in the evening and for many days after that… “kartoshka”, “kartoshka”, “kartoshka”. In the second quarter of the first month “kartoshka”, in the second quarter of the second month “kartoshka”…

“Well, eating potatoes day after day was better than being dead because that is what Zahariadis was going to do to us NOF leaders if we remained in his hands,” said Dobrin to himself. He would have done it out of rage… Or out of need to cover up his own dirty deeds. Dead people can’t talk. That’s for sure. Now if Dobrin were to get

out of prison then he would have a chance to reveal to the world the Greek anti-Macedonian policy and bring justice to the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia. And so he thought. But, at the same he would have to reveal something sinister about the communists that would damage their sacred authority and crack the bunker of “Marxism”. It would also expose those who activated the “Macedonian syndrome” of our (self-) destruction. Dobrin thought that if he were freed he would reveal the truth buried in the dust and rubble of time and free those who had been unjustly blamed and persecuted. He would also have to admit to himself that he was lied to and turned into a fool. He thought about this night after night in silence...

Months passed. Interrogator Firsov was unrelenting and impatient and even arranged theatrics for Dobrin. Dobrin was well aware that the ongoings next door were staged for especially for him... Firsov had someone, perhaps an actor, scream in pain in the next interrogation room just to scare Dobrin into confessing his sins. “Listen, listen,” said Firsov in a quiet voice and moments later asked to Dobrin to start talking, threatening that something like that would happen to him if he didn’t tell him what he wanted to know.

There was nothing to tell other than the truth but obviously that’s not what the interrogators wanted to hear so Dobrin, in a calm tone of voice, turned to Firsov and said: “I do want to apologize to my people because I am guilty of killing eighteen thousand fighters and uprooting one hundred and fifty thousand civilians from their homeland and sending them to oblivion. And let’s not forget the hundreds of Macedonian villages that I destroyed and that they completely disappeared from the map...”

Firsov was quick to jump in. He said: “Only someone like yourself dares say that. A kind of socialist reactionary of the international kind who operates against the Soviet Union and is an agent working for international imperialism. This was a fair struggle of the proletariat for socialism in Greece. Got that?!”

This was the kind of justice practiced by the strong over the weak. This is how Interrogator Lieutenant Colonel Vasilii Petrovich Firsov saw things from his point of view.

“Well, this is how the deck of cards which determined our fate was stacked for us Macedonians. And this is how we played it…” Dobrin thought to himself.