Soviet Union A Day in the Depths of the Gulag

Of some 140 political prisoners pardoned last month by Soviet Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the best known was Mathematician Iosif Begun, a 54-year-old refusenik. He was freed after serving 3 1/2 years of a seven-year term for anti-Soviet activity that consisted mainly of teaching Hebrew and campaigning for Jewish cultural rights. After being reunited with his family and friends on a Moscow train platform last week, Begun relaxed in his apartment and spoke with TIME Moscow Bureau Chief James O. Jackson of how he passed his time in prison. A compact man with cheerful blue eyes and a velvet yarmulke covering the stubble of a recently shaved head, Begun described his regimen during a typical day at Chistopol prison, 500 miles east of Moscow. Jackson's report:

Feb. 2, 5 a.m. A guard bangs on iron doors, rousing Begun and some 25 others in the prison's political wing. They must rise or risk punishment.

"I was already being punished, but I didn't know why," remembered Begun. "Just before the beginning of February they put me on a 'strict regime.' I felt that liberation was near, so I did not know why they changed me from the ordinary regime." If he did not know what was happening, he knew what strict regime meant: half-rations of about 1,000 calories a day, most of them in the form of coarse black bread, boiled potatoes and cabbage. No sugar. No fat. No meat. No visitors. No mail.

Whether on ordinary regime or strict regime, Begun lived in a cell measuring about 10 ft. long and 5 ft. wide. It contained two narrow wooden cots and an open toilet. At one end was a small window that let in narrow strips of light. "It had metal jalousies to keep out the sun and block the view to the prison yard," Begun said. At the other end was an iron door fitted with multiple locks and a closed rectangular slot called a kormushka, or feeding door.

Sometimes a cellmate shared the tiny space, but that was not always a good * thing. "Once they put in a tough young man who said he was convicted of spying for China," Begun said. "He threatened me and then beat me up." Begun pulled up a leg of his trousers to display a scar left from the beating. The guards, he said, ruled it a fight and punished both men.

6 a.m. Breakfast is passed through the kormushka in a shallow bowl. Bread, a thin gruel called kasha, and hot water.

"Our only permanent property was a spoon and a cup," said Begun. "In four years I never saw a fork or a knife. Too dangerous." Light came mainly from two bulbs, one in the ceiling and a "night- light" near the door. Both were dim, but the one near the door was kept burning round the clock. "The light didn't bother our sleeping," Begun said. "Our struggle was always for a brighter bulb so we could see to read."

7 a.m. Exercise. Strict-regime prisoners are allowed half an hour in the prison yard.

"The yard is divided into small rectangles about the size of the cells, and prisoners are allowed to exercise only with cellmates. Each yard is seven steps long, three steps wide. There is a concrete floor and rough concrete walls four meters ((12 ft.)) high, covered with wire mesh. It is like being at the bottom of a well. Prisoners call it 'seeing the sky through a screen.' " The walls were so high that the sun was never visible: "We don't see the sun for years, but it can rain on you."