The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 1

by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

  That also was the reason why they sentenced the majority of war prisoners (it was not simply because they had allowed themselves to be captured), particularly those POW’s who had seen a little more of the West than a German death camp.42 This was obvious from the fact that interned persons were sentenced as severely as POW’s. For example, during the first days of the war one of our destroyers went aground on Swedish territory. Its crew proceeded to live freely in Sweden during all the rest of the war, and in such comfort and plenty as they had never experienced before and would never experience again. The U.S.S.R. retreated, attacked, starved and died, while those scoundrels stuffed their neutral mugs. After the war Sweden returned them to us along with the destroyer. Their treason to the Motherland was indubitable—but somehow the case didn’t get off the ground. They let them go their different ways and then pasted them with Anti-Soviet Agitation for their lovely stories in praise of freedom and good eating in capitalist Sweden. (This was the Kadenko group.)43

  Within the over-all wave of those from formerly occupied areas, there followed, one after another, the quick and compact waves of the nationalities which had transgressed:

  • In 1943, the Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, and Balkars.

  • In 1944, the Crimean Tatars.

  They would not have been pushed out into eternal exile so energetically and swiftly had it not been that regular army units and military trucks were assigned to help the Organs. The military units gallantly surrounded the auls, or settlements, and, within twenty-four hours, with the speed of a parachute attack, those who had nested there for centuries past found themselves removed to railroad stations, loaded by the trainload, and rushed off to Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and the Russian North. Within one day their land and their property had been turned over to their “heirs.”

  What had happened to the Germans at the beginning of the war now happened to these nationalities: they were exiled solely on the basis of blood. There was no filling out of questionnaires; Party members, Heroes of Labor, and heroes of the still-unfinished war were all sent along with the rest.

  During the last years of the war, of course, there was a wave of German war criminals who were selected from the POW camps and transferred by court verdict to the jurisdiction of Gulag.

  In 1945, even though the war with Japan didn’t last three weeks, great numbers of Japanese war prisoners were raked in for urgent construction projects in Siberia and Central Asia, and the same process of selecting war criminals for Gulag was carried out among them.44

  At the end of 1944, when our army entered the Balkans, and especially in 1945, when it reached into Central Europe, a wave of Russian émigrés flowed through the channels of Gulag. Most were old men, who had left at the time of the Revolution, but there were also young people, who had grown up outside Russia. They usually dragged off the menfolk and left the women and children where they were. It is true that they did not take everyone, but they took all those who, in the course of twenty-five years, had expressed even the mildest political views, or who had expressed them earlier, during the Revolution. They did not touch those who had lived a purely vegetable existence. The main waves came from Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia; there were fewer from Austria and Germany. In the other countries of Eastern Europe, there were hardly any Russians.

  As if in response to 1945, a wave of émigrés poured from Manchuria too. (Some of them were not arrested immediately. Entire families were encouraged to return to the homeland as free persons, but once back in Russia they were separated and sent into exile or taken to prison.)

  All during 1945 and 1946 a big wave of genuine, at-long-last, enemies of the Soviet government flowed into the Archipelago. (These were the Vlasov men, the Krasnov Cossacks, and Moslems from the national units created under Hitler.) Some of them had acted out of conviction; others had been merely involuntary participants.

  Along with them were seized not less than one million fugitives from the Soviet government—civilians of all ages and of both sexes who had been fortunate enough to find shelter on Allied territory, but who in 1946–1947 were perfidiously returned by Allied authorities into Soviet hands.45

  A certain number of Poles, members of the Home Army, followers of Mikolajczyk, arrived in Gulag in 1945 via our prisons.

  There were a certain number of Rumanians and Hungarians.

  At war’s end and for many years after, there flowed uninterruptedly an abundant wave of Ukrainian nationalists (the “Banderovtsy”).

  Against the background of this enormous postwar displacement of millions, few paid much attention to such small waves as:

  • Foreigners’ girl friends (in 1946–1947)—in other words, Soviet girls who went out with foreigners. They sentenced these girls under Article 7-35—SOE—Socially Dangerous Element.

  • Spanish children—the same children who had been taken from their homeland during the Spanish Civil War, but who were adults by the end of World War II. Raised in our boarding schools, they nonetheless fitted very poorly into our life. Many longed to go “home.” They, too, were given 7-35—SOE—Socially Dangerous Element. And those who were particularly stubborn got 58-6—espionage on behalf of America.

  (In fairness we must not forget the brief reverse wave of priests in 1947. Yes, a miracle! For the first time in thirty years they freed priests! They didn’t actually go about seeking them out in camps, but whenever a priest was known to people in freedom, and whenever a name and exact location could be provided, the individual priests in question were sent out to freedom in order to strengthen the church, which at that time was being revived.)

  * * *

  We have to remind our readers once again that this chapter does not attempt by any means to list all the waves which fertilized Gulag—but only those which had a political coloration. And just as, in a course in physiology, after a detailed description of the circulation of the blood, one can begin over again and describe in detail the lymphatic system, one could begin again and describe the waves of nonpolitical offenders and habitual criminals from 1918 to 1953. And this description, too, would run long. It would bring to light many famous decrees, now in part forgotten (even though they have never been repealed), which supplied abundant human material for the insatiable Archipelago. One was the Decree on Absenteeism. One was the Decree on Production of Bad Quality Goods. Another was on samogon [moonshine] distilling. Its peak period was 1922—but arrests for this were constant throughout the twenties. And the Decree on the Punishment of Collective Farmers for Failure to Fulfill the Obligatory Norm of Labor Days. And the Decree on the Introduction of Military Discipline on Railroads, issued in April, 1943—not at the beginning of the war, but when it had already taken a turn for the better.

  In accordance with the ancient Petrine tradition, these decrees always put in an appearance as the most important element in all our legislation, but without any comprehension of or reference to the whole of our previous legislation. Learned jurists were supposed to coordinate the branches of the law, but they were not particularly energetic at it, nor particularly successful either.

  This steady pulse of decrees led to a curious national pattern of violations and crimes. One could easily recognize that neither burglary, nor murder, nor samogon distilling, nor rape ever seemed to occur at random intervals or in random places throughout the country as a result of human weakness, lust, or failure to control one’s passions. By no means! One detected, instead, a surprising unanimity and monotony in the crimes committed. The entire Soviet Union would be in a turmoil of rape alone, or murder alone, or samogon distilling alone, each in its turn—in sensitive reaction to the latest government decree. Each particular crime or violation seemed somehow to be playing into the hands of the latest decree so that it would disappear from the scene that much faster! At that precise moment, the particular crime which had just been foreseen, and for which wise new legislation had just provided stricter punishment, would explode simultaneously everywhere.

  The Decr
ee on the militarization of railroads crowded the military tribunals with the women and adolescents who did most of the work on the railroads during the war years and who, having received no barracks training beforehand, were those mostly involved in delays and violations. The Decree on Failure to Fulfill the Obligatory Norm of Labor Days greatly simplified the procedure for removing from the scene those collective farmers who were dissatisfied with receiving for their labor mere “labor day” points in the farm account books and wanted produce instead. Whereas previously their cases had required a trial, based on the article of the Code relating to “economic counterrevolution,” now it was enough to produce a collective farm decree confirmed by the District Executive Committee. And even then these collective farmers, although they were sent into exile, must have been relieved to know that they were not listed as enemies of the people. The obligatory norm of “labor days” was different in different areas, the easiest of all being among the peoples of the Caucasus—seventy-five “labor days” a year; but despite that, many of them were also sent off to Krasnoyarsk Province for eight years.

  As we have said, we are not going to go into a lengthy and lavish examination of the waves of nonpolitical offenders and common criminals. But, having reached 1947, we cannot remain silent about one of the most grandiose of Stalin’s decrees. We have already mentioned the famous law of “Seven-Eight” or “Seven-eighths,” on the basis of which they arrested people right and left—for taking a stalk of grain, a cucumber, two small potatoes, a chip of wood, a spool of thread—all of whom got ten years.46

  But the requirements of the times, as Stalin understood them, had changed, and the tenner, which had seemed adequate on the eve of a terrible war, seemed now, in the wake of a world-wide historical victory, inadequate. And so again, in complete disregard of the Code, and totally overlooking the fact that many different articles and decrees on the subject of thefts and robberies already existed, on June 4, 1947, a decree was issued which outdid them all. It was instantly christened “Four-sixths” by the undismayed prisoners.

  The advantages of the new decree lay first of all in its newness. From the very moment it appeared, a torrent of the crimes it specified would be bound to burst forth, thereby providing an abundant wave of newly sentenced prisoners. But it offered an even greater advantage in prison terms. If a young girl sent into the fields to get a few ears of grain took along two friends for company (“an organized gang”) or some twelve-year-old youngsters went after cucumbers or apples, they were liable to get twenty years in camp. In factories, the maximum sentence was raised to twenty-five years. (This sentence, called the quarter, had been introduced a few days earlier to replace the death penalty, which had been abolished as a humane act.)47

  And then, at long last, an ancient shortcoming of the law was corrected. Previously the only failure to make a denunciation which qualified as a crime against the state had been in connection with political offenses. But now simple failure to report the theft of state or collective farm property earned three years of camp or seven years of exile.

  In the years immediately following this decree, whole “divisions” from the countryside and the cities were sent off to cultivate the islands of Gulag in place of the natives who had died off there. True, these waves were processed through the police and the ordinary courts, and did not clog the channels of State Security, which, even without them, were overstrained in the postwar years.

  Stalin’s new line, suggesting that it was necessary, in the wake of the victory over fascism, to jail more people more energetically and for longer terms than ever before, had immediate repercussions, of course, on political prisoners.

  The year 1948–1949, notable throughout Soviet public life for intensified persecution and vigilance, was marked by one tragicomedy hitherto unheard of even in Stalinist antijustice—that of the repeaters.

  That is what, in the language of Gulag, they called those still undestroyed unfortunates of 1937 vintage, who had succeeded in surviving ten impossible, unendurable years, and who in 1947–1948, had timidly stepped forth onto the land of freedom . . . worn out, broken in health, but hoping to live out in peace what little of their lives remained. But some sort of savage fantasy (or stubborn malice, or unsated vengeance) pushed the Victorious Generalissimo into issuing the order to arrest all those cripples over again, without any new charges! It was even disadvantageous, both economically and politically, to clog the meat grinder with its own refuse. But Stalin issued the order anyway. Here was a case in which a historical personality simply behaved capriciously toward historical necessity.

  And so it was necessary to take all of them though they had hardly had a chance to attach themselves to new places or new families. They were rounded up with much the same weary indolence they themselves now returned with. They knew beforehand the whole way of the cross ahead. They did not ask “What for?” And they did not say to their families: “I’ll be back.” They put on their shabbiest rags, poured some makhorka into their camp tobacco pouches, and went off to sign the deposition. (Only one question: “Are you the one who was in prison?” “Yes.” “Take ten more.”)

  At this point the Autocrat decided it wasn’t enough to arrest just those who had survived since 1937! What about the children of his sworn enemies? They, too, must be imprisoned! They were growing up, and they might have notions of vengeance. (He may have had a heavy dinner and had a nightmare about those children.) They went through the lists, looked around, and arrested children—but not very many. They arrested the children of the purged army commanders, but not all the children of Trotskyites. And so the wave of the vengeful children came into being. (Among such children were seventeen-year-old Lena Kosaryeva and thirty-five-year-old Yelena Rakovskaya.)

  By 1948, after the great European displacement, Stalin had succeeded once again in tightly barricading himself in and pulling the ceiling down closer to him: in this reduced space he had recreated the tension of 1937.

  And so in 1948, 1949, and 1950 there flowed past:

  • Alleged spies (ten years earlier they had been German and Japanese, now they were Anglo-American).

  • Believers (this wave non-Orthodox for the most part).

  • Those geneticists and plant breeders, disciples of the late Vavilov and of Mendel, who had not previously been arrested.

  • Just plain ordinary thinking people (and students, with particular severity) who had not been sufficiently scared away from the West. It was fashionable to charge them with:

  • VAT—Praise of American Technology;

  • VAD—Praise of American Democracy; and

  • PZ—Toadyism Toward the West.

  These waves were not unlike those of 1937, but the sentences were different. The standard sentence was no longer the patriarchal ten-ruble bill, but the new Stalinist twenty-five. By now the tenner was for juveniles.

  There was a good-sized wave from the new Decree on Revealing State Secrets. (State secrets included such things as: the district harvest; any figure on epidemics; the type of goods produced by any workshop or mini-factory; mention of a civil airport, municipal transport routes, or the family name of any prisoner imprisoned in any camp.) For violations of this decree they gave fifteen years.

  The waves of nationalities were not forgotten either. The Ukrainian nationalists, the “Banderovtsy,” taken in the heat of struggle from the forests where they fought, kept flowing all this time. Simultaneously, all West Ukrainian country people received tenners and fivers in camps and exile—presumably for having had connections with the partisans: someone had let them spend the night; someone had once fed them; someone had not reported them. For about a year, starting in 1950, a wave of wives of Banderovtsy was under way. They gave them each ten years for failure to make a denunciation—so as to finish off their husbands faster.

  By this time resistance in Lithuania and Estonia had already come to an end. But in 1949 new waves of new “social prophylaxis” to assure collectivization kept coming. They took whole t
rainloads of city dwellers and peasants from the three Baltic republics into Siberian exile. (The historical rhythm was disrupted in these republics: they were forced to recapitulate in brief, limited periods the more extended experience of the rest of the country.)

  In 1948 one more nationalist wave went into exile—that of the Greeks who inhabited the areas around the Sea of Azov, the Kuban, and Sukhumi. They had done nothing to offend the Father during the war, but now he avenged himself on them for his failure in Greece, or so it seemed. This wave, too, was evidently the fruit of his personal insanity. The majority of the Greeks ended up in Central Asian exile; those who voiced their discontent were thrown into political prisons.

  Around 1950, to avenge the same lost war, or perhaps just to balance those already in exile, the Greek rebels from Markos’ army, who had been turned over to us by Bulgaria, were themselves shipped off to the Archipelago.

  During the last years of Stalin’s life, a wave of Jews became noticeable. (From 1950 on they were hauled in little by little as cosmopolites. And that was why the doctors’ case was cooked up. It would appear that Stalin intended to arrange a great massacre of the Jews.)48

  But this became the first plan of his life to fail. God told him—apparently with the help of human hands—to depart from his rib cage.

  The preceding exposition should have made it clear, one would think, that in the removal of millions and in the populating of Gulag, consistent, cold-blooded planning and never-weakening persistence were at work.

  That we never did have any empty prisons, merely prisons which were full or prisons which were very, very overcrowded.

  And that while you occupied yourself to your heart’s content studying the safe secrets of the atomic nucleus, researching the influence of Heidegger on Sartre, or collecting Picasso reproductions; while you rode off in your railroad sleeping compartment to vacation resorts, or finished building your country house near Moscow—the Black Marias rolled incessantly through the streets and the gaybisty—the State Security men—knocked at doors and rang doorbells.