The Russian Character
by
Alex Domokos
No doubt the Russian soul is enigmatic. Maybe all humans are enigmatic up to a point, but few nations are so unfathomable, so mysterious as the Russians are. Although we can say it was shocking to learn that the nation of Mozart, Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller, Kant and Hegel could be as inhuman as the German Nazis, it is equally unbelievable that the nation of Pushkin, Chekhov, Tolstoi, Vershagin, Gorky, and Dostoevsky was just as cruel and uninterested in the value of human life as the Russians were under Stalin. But there is a difference between the character of the two cruelties. Not that the end result was different, but the emotions were
. As for German cruelty, it became obvious only after the war that it was cold and calculated. It was expressed without emotion as a systematic, frighteningly orderly annihilation of humans. The Russians were temperamental, capricious, emotional, and almost frenzied torturers. One would shoot you in the stomach, no questions asked. The other would offer you a last cigarette before shooting you. That sudden change of emotion is so obvious in Russian folk music. It begins with a melancholic slow melody and suddenly erupts into a vivacious rhythm, only to stop as suddenly, returning to the melody of soul-searching blue melancholy.
Sudden and unpredictable mood changes were surprising for us at the beginning of our captivity in Soviet Russia. We needed time to adapt to it, but after years of incarceration we learned how to deal with it. An episode that took place in the Caucasus may make this clear.
We, the Hungarian officers, were exempt from compulsory physical labour by the Geneva Convention. However, being in a cage with nothing to do between meals was nerve-wracking monotony. When the announcement came about a new "potato commando", many young officers were eager to enlist voluntarily. The location of our 'potato commando' camp was high up on the slope of the Elbrus, the dominant peak of the Caucasus.
At a height of about three thousand metres, there is a plateau where the virgin volcanic soil yielded a tremendous amount of fist-sized potatoes. The harvest was preserved in great heaps like burial mounds. These were covered over with soil to protect the potatoes from freezing. Now, it was early spring and we had to open up the silos and load the potatoes into brand new Studebakers, supplied by the United States as gifts to the Soviet Union. Only those wonderful machines could cope with that hostile roadless terrain and oxygen-starved atmosphere.
Our reward for volunteering was an unlimited amount of boiled potatoes, enhancing our diet for the physically strenuous work. We were lodged in a dugout cabin where the brick oven was fed with logs from the forest nearby. Being warm and well-fed was heaven on earth for a P.O.W. in 1949 in the USSR. There was only a six-man detachment of guards under the command of a Cossack lieutenant. He was a horseman wounded in the war, and being commander of such an insignificant unit greatly hurt his self-esteem. He seldom visited us. We saw him in the distance galloping along the edge of the forest. We were working under the direct supervision of an agronomist, a clerk of the state farm, who was crippled in the war. His hostility was obvious at morning briefings when he ordered which silo should be opened. His contempt grew even further when he learned that we were volunteers and officers.
On a sunny morning, when the crisp mountain air was still well below freezing point, he ordered us to take off our cotton padded coats and work bare-chested. He wanted to force us to work fast. But being old foxes, we knew our rights and refused to obey. He confronted us with blazing eyes and attempted to take our coats by force, but we surrounded him. The shovels in our hands were menacing. When the wretched foreman realized that he had aroused our ire, he became frightened. He broke through our ring and ran towards the village guard post. He met the Cossack and sputtered out his story about the revolt of the prisoners, then collapsed. The Cossack, knowing nothing about his epileptic condition and seeing him on the ground foaming at the mouth, assumed that the man had been beaten. He gave rein to his horse and galloped towards us, revolver drawn. Seeing our danger, we quickly moved to the other side of the mound; it was about two metres high and could not be crossed on horseback. He raced around the silo shouting insults at us, daring us to face him. He was in a frenzy but we were too wily to accept his challenge. We just climbed over the top from one side to the other keeping out of harm's way. The cat and mouse game came to an end when one of our group shouted back to him that we were Hungarian officers.
"We are officers like you and are voluntarily helping to collect the crop for the Soviet people."
He stopped as though struck by lightning. "Officers? Da, charsho. Papirosy?" (Officers, are you? Well then, would you like a smoke?)
With that he took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and distributed them among us while listening to our explanation of the commotion.
"What? He ordered you to take off your overcoats? He has no right to give you orders! He is a nobody! I'll go and teach him a lesson he'll never forget!"
It took all our persuasion to talk him out of beating the foreman for his insolence in daring to give orders to officers. His change of mood from hatred to friendship took only moments, just like balalaika music which jumps from a peak of exuberance down to the pit of despair. While in captivity, it was not only dangerous but sometimes fatal for prisoners to deal with overlords of such mercurial character who might shoot you first and cry for forgiveness later.