text: So we came to the section. Everyone started talking to him: “Slava, Slava, Slava…” He inquired how things were, and they told him that the convention had decided to do Kostenyak in for killing Korzubiy, and to rob some guys, too. Then he pointed at me and said: “Here, these guys are in the barrack number seven. I forbid you to rob them or to kill Kostenyak. As to the rest of the zone inmates - do as you please”. Anyway we stayed awake for the whole night and put out the sentries to keep watch. No one ever bothered us, however.
  The next day we were due for the transport. Each train coach had 80 people, and as the fate would have it, I, the only one of our company, ended up in a coach with the criminals, specifically, with Batul – the honored thief of the Soviet Union, and Ivan – the honored thief of the Tayshet road. I started praying in my soul, but I cannot refuse as I’ll be shot on site. The orchestra is playing; we are loaded into the coaches. I curled in a corner with my backpack, expecting to be strangled or killed any moment. What can I do on my own against the whole criminal world? But Batul stood up and addressed me: “Petro, choose a seat to your liking”. I thought he was baiting me and responded: “No, I am OK where I am, does not matter to me”. He looked around and ordered one of the thieves: “Now, “weg” from the seat". The man jumped off and said: “Lie down here, Petro”. And then I witnessed their “session” or “convention” for the first time. I was the only banderovets present. They were discussing their strategies with respect to our destination. I told them point blank: “We are taken to Vanyno bay”. And there are about 24 camps in the area. We were to be taken to Kolyma. And that is what happened.
  It was a pandemonium broke loose. At nights the zone would be attacked because they had a lot of stool-pigeons, i.e. the thieves turned informers …Slavko and I lived in the one part of the barrack, while Batul and Ivan stayed on the other side of it.
  “Feliks” boat took us to Kolyma. It was the year 1949, prior to 1950, as I stayed at Tayshet very shortly. In three weeks it took us to reach Magadan 320 people were killed, so it was Sodom and Gomorrah in its own right. The trials kept going on: a man could prove himself a hero in a camp, but here the criminal “convention” would decide his fate.
  V.Ovsienko: From what you are saying it seems like there was no one but thieves on the boat. What about the guards?
  P.Sichko: You see, the guards had no access to where we travelled –down in the hold, stowed there. The guards are up, it is totally a different world. Their only care is that no one jumps overboard into the sea. But in a prison the prisoners take control.
  Upon arrival we started dragging the corpses out. We were sent to the transit camps. That was the gateway to Kolyma, its camps and our life there. Tough stuff. It would be a long story to relate all that. Let’s take, for example, Arkagala or Bytygichag – the so-called Death Valley with its castrite- uranium mines. That’s where uranium and castrite were explored. The first prisoners sent there in three months developed the silicosis of lungs.They were taken to a hospital for a short time and then they died. And do you know how they were buried? There was a crater 300 m deep. A dead prisoner was brought there and thrown into the crater. No grave, nothing to look at.
  There the so-called “mastyrka” was my only salvation. It would take long time to explain, how I applied different types of “mastyrka” so I’ll just share one episode. I had first category, which meant that I would be sent to the castrite-uranium mine. I applied the stuff to my leg and ended up in the central hospital. Later the hospital director Sofia Korotkova visited the hospital. She was about 38 at the time. First I did not spill the beans about the true nature of my injury, but eventually…She used to pray fervently, she was very pious. She bought food for the seriously sick with her own money. When we started trusting each other I did not need that simulation, which was detrimental to my health, any longer. She came to love me as her own son and used to start her daily hospital rounds with my ward. She would come inside, sit on my bed, tell me what she had seen in her dream and I would explain the meaning of it. Then she would put on her white coat and start the round. I got used to seeing her first thing in the morning. But one morning I waited for her in vain – Sofia Pavlivna never arrived. She came later, in her white coat and in tears. She told me:”Sonny, you are sent with the transport. There is nothing I can do.” She also told me I was being sent to “Elgenugol’”, some 500 km into the Kolyma territory.