Album 9. Section 1
June 1947 - 1948 

Summary

Euphrosinia was put to extract coal from the working face at mine #13/15. The heavy work of a miner was to her liking. But not everything went smoothly. One deadly ordeal followed after another.

The eleven-day hunger strike started after the work at the morgue continued on arrival to the mine. They didn't attach her for administration being confident that she would prove incapable to withstand the workload and return to the camp hospital. Exhausted to the limits Euphrosinia went to the accounting department to sort out the problem but as a result of an encounter and row with the chief security officer she was sent to the punitive confinement where prisoners dug trenches for dead mates near the Shmitikha Mountain. A guard was going to beat one of her mates but Euphrosinia stood up for her. Other prisoners liked Euphrosinia's behaviour and they shared clothing and footwear with her. That could not have come at a better time because the work at the mine required for changing clothes and Euphrosinia, before going to the mine, thought she would need nothing more in this life and returned spare clothes including a quilted jacket and a blanket to the TsBL storeroom.

The next Euphrosinia's bicker was with a mine foreman who accused her of absence from work for no good reason. But she managed to prove the absurdity of the accusations. She had to confront the mine itself later, when careless mates left her in an untimbered bottomhole and an exfoliated layer of coal nearly buried her but she managed to escape to the light from the thick darkness.

The mining prisoners had two "masters" - the Norilsk mining and smelting group and the prison camp. A clash with the camp security officials was the worst thing. Euphrosinia appropriately responded to a guard's mistreatment and was placed in a punishment cell without a physician's approval. Poletayev, the head of security, slapped her in the face "to cut the comb" and then beat her up. They kept her in a cold cell when it was hard frost outside and later threatened with sending to work in a sand quarry, and that was tantamount to death. But the mine management found out and protected her from the camp administration's arbitrary treatment. Miners valued Euphrosinia's heroism and her ability to play it cool under any conditions. At a meeting in the headquarters Baydin who represented the mine remembered that Euphrosinia managed to prevent an accident putting her life in jeopardy, showed courage and resourcefulness and so had every reason to be proud, and thus they could not treat her that way.

Rogozhkin who headed the Communist Party cell at the mine came to see Euphrosinia to the Nagorny came. When he learned that she slept on bare boards and had no clothes he ordered to give her a blanket, a quilted jacket and a cap. So, the first problems linked to the work in the mine were overcome.

While the trail was still hot Euphrosinia wrote a complaint of Lieutenant Poletayev's behaviour to the chief of the Norilsk prison camps, and Poletayev was reduced to a lower rank.

Since Euphrosinia had once worked as a medical drawer she had moist colours, coloured pencils, ink and paper. Drawing saved her from the camp environment even though she refused to do an artist's job at the camp club. Euphrosinia had put down in a notebook the story of her escape from exile and made several illustrations. A woman Euphrosinia had saved obtaining for her light work outside the mine gave the notebook to an officer in exchange for two packs of shag. It was in 1948, the evidence was not enough for new charges and the potential case was swept under the carpet. The threat of the third conviction Euphrosinia apprehended went over her head.