Chapter 9 of 29
Motor Railcar
Every site across the enormous test range, including the residential settlement known as the “Ten,” was linked by an extensive railway network used both for technical operations and to carry personnel. By the range’s fiftieth anniversary, its tracks totaled 500 km, compared with 1,400 km of roads. People therefore traveled to work on ordinary passenger trains. According to legend, the nickname motovoz came from the small early passenger trains at the Soviet Union’s first missile range, Kapustin Yar.
In 1967, from the platform «Gorodskaya» six such trains left for the sites. The coaches of our trains were mostly plazkart, a few coupe, but there were also very old ones from the Civil War era, entirely wooden inside and out. In such coaches they shoot films about ruin, the NEP and the revolution. In motion such a coach visibly twists and bounces with a certain railway creak, both of its ends sway unpredictably on their own. Maybe on other routes to other sites there was other rolling stock, I do not know, but ours was exactly this mixed assortment. At the platform, near every coach, a controller greets passengers and checks passes so that an enemy does not climb into the wrong train. Our train started exactly at 7 in the morning and returned at 7 in the evening, which gave rise to the sarcastic «semichasovoy rabochiy den». For the far sites, trains left substantially earlier and those test officers had, naturally, a longer workday. The distance from «deyatka» to our 32nd was about 50 kilometers.
At 8.30 our train arrives at station «Minskaya», where the unit transport, buses and trucks are waiting, and in about 15-20 minutes we are on site, at our 32nd, and at 9.00 we start breakfast in our dining hall. At 17.30 buses and those same trucks take people to «Minskaya», and then everything happens in reverse order.
But trips from platform «Gorodskaya» began somewhere around 1965. Before that, our trains waited for test officers in the mornings at Tyuratam-Tam station itself, on the far tracks, beyond the mainline ones. That is where test officers were brought from the sites after the workday.
The most valuable bunks are the third ones in a plazkart coach; they were the first ones assigned, and they are excellent for sleeping. If you entered the coach early, you immediately climb onto your favorite upper one, with a cap or beret under your head, and instantly, without waiting for departure, sleep, sleep. As soon as your head touched the «pillow» you immediately sank into the sweetest sleep. Coupe coaches were scarce; in them people secretly played cards. In plazkart coaches, domino was most often played in the «man to man, a man is a wolf» way. In that game, domino tiles can be placed upright with the blank side up. It is a strict game: the loser plays the next round standing up, putting on a greatcoat, hat and web belt. In some groups it was customary to let the earflaps of the cap fall and tie them under the chin. In winter the coaches were hot from heating, and a half-undressed, softened crowd dozed off, some reading, some playing chess, while some fellow in full uniform stood fully dressed and was venting energy. When I saw this for the first time, I could not take my eyes off such idiocy.
The coaches were always overcrowded, especially on Fridays, when a bachelor would break away from his maddening site and run out to «deyatka». If you entered a coach late, you’d ride standing in the aisle or in the vestibule. In fact, after several years they added coaches and even coaches with airplane-style seats appeared.
But the most vivid memories are, of course, of the summer motovoz. Every ride on it is a song, long, dreary and sweaty. On a hot day (and here in summer there are no cool days), the carriage was so warmed that if you had not taken care to bring a folder or a thick magazine, you would ride standing. Everything in the carriage was scorching hot, and so were the seats. And immediately everyone begins to sweat. You have to sit carefully, touching nothing, so as not to burn yourself. After an hour there is a pool of sweat beneath you. And then, after an hour of torment, our train finally arrived at Tyuratam-Tam station. We unload with wet bottoms and backs and begin to run as fast as possible, but carefully, across the tracks of the Moscow — Central Asia mainline. Fast to catch a bus or an onboard vehicle, and carefully, so as not to get under the rushing trains. The thing is, «deyatka» is on one side of the mainline, and all test range sites on the other. And you have to jump into the transport that will take you to the city. If you do not hurry, you will wait up to an hour for the return of the vehicle column for those left behind, at night, in winter, and in the wind.
After a couple of years our trains began stopping out in the steppe, not coming within about five kilometers of the station, and we too, with hoots, rushed to the awaiting column of 20 or 30 covered trucks with tarpaulins or open trucks and buses. Each such boarding into a vehicle is a contest of speed, agility, strength and brazenness. Since the main mass of passengers was youth, stuck in the carriage and also those seated at the controls, this evening contest for a seat in a vehicle went with vigorous excitement, and in the very climax, jumping over the truck side was done with some wildness. Buttons fly, straps fly, greatcoats crackle, and all this under shrieks and snorts, seasoned with refined swearing, thanks to the fact that senior officers and command were far behind. Like it or not, all the buttons end up being rewired eventually. You prick two holes in the greatcoat with a thick awl, at least a centimeter apart, push a very thick wiring cable through a button hole, and tie a double knot from inside the coat. The knot is, of course, ridiculously huge. But if the enemy manages to tear it out, it will be out with a piece of the coat.
These daily evening tournaments immediately divided the young officers into one solid, watchful and cautious party and a much more numerous party of the «cheerful and lively».
But already neither of them had to run across the tracks before moving trains. And after some time, trains from the test range went to «deyatka» via a new overpass without crossing the mainline. But even after this modernization the motovoz remained one of the main irritants and never added optimism, and often ruined a well-lived day.
Finally, at the beginning of 63, they built and started on our 31st site an initial oxygen plant, underground, and my ZhKh, a railway storage, with a mobile plant and officers, began preparing for relocation to Balashikha, near Moscow. I wrote a report about my unwillingness to serve in Balashikha without hesitation, which simply knocked out the command and fellow officers and returned me to my second group of Gogsadze in the watch of Yuri Gubarev. I simply could not leave my home team. It was thought that any sensible officer dreams of escaping from Tyuratam to the European part of the USSR, especially to Moscow. And by this time I had already already spent my third Tyuratam-Tam year, still in the same corner room of the two-story hotel, with Vova Ambrosovich, who is also Vol, who is also Ambrasuha. Vol is three years older than me, but it turned out we had lots of shared tastes and even, speaking in high style, close life positions.
What brought us together was disdain for partisanship, a love of halva and wafers, books, high-quality and jazz music. Halva, by the way, Ambrosuha could eat no less than a kilogram at one sitting. So, however, could I as well. Much later Vol managed to transfer to Moscow, into the air defense system, for which he even joined the party.
And how many sleepless nights were spent by the radio receiver! Pat Boone, Din Martin, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Paul Anka. And Eddy Calvert’s «Angelina»! And the powerful orchestras of Count Basie, Duke and Glenn Miller, Kemferta, Nori Paramora! The lovely soft Victor Silvester. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong with Prima. And the incomparable, inimitable timbre of Willie Cannover, host of the program «Music Y-eS-e». The first phrases of his velvet voice set one up for the night’s jazz treats. Thanks to the guys on the jammers—they stopped jamming when music broadcasting began. At night station «Radio Beirut» came in well on medium wave, and at dawn, «Radio Ceylon» on shortwave, also with the right «our» repertoire.
But the time came to relocate from this hospitable two-story hotel, dormitory to the dormitory of my 2nd group. In other words, «under one roof», as gently pointed out to me by Vladimir Emelyanych, our «Goga». It is a long one-story barracks with a central corridor, but unlike the building of my former hotel, the barracks are planted with fairly tall poplars that give shade and coziness. Like the two-story hotel, my new barracks is also on one side of the parade ground. Here there are also two other dormitories and the headquarters building. On the other side of the square is a barrack town. From the side of the stadium, a clinic is attached to the square. Between the two-story building and the 2nd group dormitory is a barrack that later became the women’s dormitory. In the 2nd group dormitory, just as in the hotel, there was also a sergeant as adjutant (cleaning, bed linen changing), but not an informer. In this was his main difference from hotel sergeant Polischuk. And this Polischuk informed on all residents of the two-story hotel, with pure delight. It is hard to believe now, but setting up a modest friendly drinking session, the two of us, Vol and I, laid bought snack packs on our windowsill so that we could enter the dormitory lightly under the vigilant eye of the informer. That is how strong Soviet power was! An informer. And Polischuk will teach his children the same, to breed serfs and informers.