Sketches of the Criminal World (New York Review Books Classics) by Varlam Shalamov

Author:Varlam Shalamov [Shalamov, Varlam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2020-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

1967

KHAN-GIREI

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Tamarin-Meretsky was neither a Tamarin nor a Meretsky. He was the Tatar prince Khan-Girei,41 a general from Tsar Nicolas II’s suite. When General Kornilov was attacking Petrograd in the summer of 1917, Khan-Girei was the chief of staff of the Savage Division, army units especially loyal to the tsar. Kornilov never reached Petrograd, and Khan-Girei was out of a job. Later, when the call—a well-known test of an officer’s conscience—came from General Brusilov, Khan-Girei joined the Red Army and turned his weapons against his former friends. At this point Khan-Girei disappeared, and Tamarin the cavalry commander appeared, a commander of a cavalry corps, with three stars, using the relative scale of military ranks of the time. With this rank, Tamarin took part in the Civil War, and as that came to an end he was independently in command of operations against the Turkestan rebels, the Basmachi, and against Enver Pasha. The Basmachi were crushed and routed, but Enver Pasha slipped away in the sands of Central Asia and escaped the clutches of the Soviet cavalry, vanishing somewhere in Bukhara and then reappearing on the Soviet border, only to be killed in an unplanned exchange of fire with patrols. That was the end of the life of Enver Pasha, a talented military leader and politician who at one point declared Holy War against Soviet Russia.

Tamarin was in command of the operation to destroy the Basmachi, and when it turned out that Enver Pasha had escaped, an investigation of the Tamarin case was started. Tamarin argued that he was not at fault and explained why the capture of Enver Pasha had failed. But Enver was too prominent a figure. Tamarin was demobilized, and the prince found himself with no future and no present, either. His wife had died, but his old mother was alive and well; so was his sister. Tamarin, who had trusted Brusilov, felt a responsibility for his family.

Tamarin’s consistent interest in literature, even in contemporary poetry, was an interest and taste that gave the former general an opportunity to earn a living in literary work. Tamarin published several articles in Komsomol Pravda, signing them A.A. Meretsky.

The high waters break into the riverbanks. But somewhere forms are being rustled, packets are being opened, and, while not yet stapled into a criminal dossier, a document is presented for reporting.

Tamarin was arrested. The new investigation is now conducted in full officially. Three years of concentration camp for nonrepentance. A confession would have mitigated his guilt.

In 1928 Russia had only one concentration camp, USLON—the administration of Special Purpose Solovetsky Island Camps. A fourth department of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camps was later opened in the upper Vishera, a hundred kilometers from Solikamsk, near the village of Vizhaikha. Tamarin traveled in a party of prisoners to the Urals in a Stolypin prisoners’ carriage,42 thinking over a plan, a very important plan he had worked out in great detail. The carriage in which he was being taken to the north was one of the latest Stolypin carriages.

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