The Gulag Archipelago

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  The picture of emigration presented in our country was so falsified that if one had conducted a mass survey to ask which side the Russian émigrés were on in the Spanish Civil War, or else, perhaps, what side they were on in the Second World War, with one voice everyone would have replied: For Franco! For Hitler! Even now people in our country do not know that many White émigrés fought on the Republican side in Spain. The émigrés did not support Hitler. They ostracized Merezhkovsky and Gippius, who took Hitler’s part, leaving them to alienated loneliness. There was a joke—except it wasn’t a joke—to the effect that Denikin wanted to fight for the Soviet Union against Hitler, and that at one time Stalin planned to arrange his return to the Motherland, not for military reasons, obviously, but as a symbol of national unity. During the German occupation of France, a horde of Russian émigrés, young and old, joined the Resistance. And after the liberation of Paris they swarmed to the Soviet Embassy to apply for permission to return to the Motherland. No matter what kind of Russia it was—it was still Russia! That was their slogan, and that is how they proved they had not been lying previously about their love for her. (Imprisoned in 1945 and 1946, they were almost happy that these prison bars and these jailers were their own, Russian. And they observed with surprise the Soviet boys scratching their heads and saying: “Why the hell did we come back? Wasn’t there room enough for us in Europe?”)

  But, given that Stalinist logic which said that every Soviet person who had lived abroad had to be imprisoned in camp, how could the émigrés possibly escape the same lot? In the Balkans, Central Europe, Harbin, they were arrested as soon as the Soviet armies arrived. They were arrested in their apartments and on the street, just like Soviet citizens. For a while State Security arrested only men, and not all of them, only those who had in one or another way revealed a political bias. Later on, their families were transported to exile in Russia, but some were left where they were in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. In France they were welcomed into Soviet citizenship with honors and flowers and sent back to the Motherland in comfort; and only when they got to the U.S.S.R. were they raked in. Things dragged out longer for the Shanghai émigrés. In 1945 Russian hands didn’t reach that far. But a plenipotentiary from the Soviet government went to Shanghai and announced a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet extending forgiveness to all émigrés. Well, now, how could one refuse to believe that? The government certainly couldn’t lie! Whether or not there actually was such a decree, it did not, in any case, tie the hands of the Organs. The Shanghai Russians expressed their delight. They were told they could take with them as many possessions as they wanted and whatever they wanted. They went home with automobiles—the country could put them to good use. They were told they could settle wherever they wanted to in the Soviet Union and, of course, work at any profession or trade. They were transported from Shanghai in steamships. The fate of the passengers varied. On some of the ships, for some reason, they were given no food at all. They also suffered various fates after reaching the port of Nakhodka (which was, incidentally, one of the main transit centers of Gulag). Almost all of them were loaded into freight cars, like prisoners, except that they had, as yet, no strict convoy, and there were no police dogs. Some of them were actually delivered to inhabited places, to cities, and allowed to live there for two or three years. Others were delivered in trainloads straight to their camps and were dumped out somewhere off a high embankment into the forest beyond the Volga, together with their white pianos and their jardinieres. In 1948–1949, the former Far Eastern émigrés who had until then managed to stay out of camps were scraped up to the last man.

  Chapter 7

  In the Engine Room

  THERE WAS A box at the so-called Butyrki “station”: the famous frisking box, where new arrivals were searched. It had space enough for five or six jailers to process up to twenty zeks in one batch. Now, however, it was empty and the rough-hewn search tables had nothing on them. Over at one side of the room, seated behind a small nondescript table beneath a small lamp, was a neat, black-haired NKVD major. Patient boredom was what his face chiefly revealed. The intervals during which the zeks were brought in and led out one by one were a waste of his time. Their signatures could have been collected much, much faster.

  He indicated that I was to sit down on the stool opposite him, on the other side of his table. He asked my name. To the right and left of the inkwell lay two piles of white papers the size of a half-sheet of typewriter paper, all looking much the same. In format they were just like the fuel requisitions handed out in apartment-house management offices, or warrants in official institutions for purchase of office supplies. Leafing through the pile on the right, the major found the paper which referred to me. He pulled it out and read it aloud to me in a bored patter. (I understood I had been sentenced to eight years.) Immediately, he began to write a statement on the back of it, with a fountain pen, to the effect that the text had been read to me on the particular date.

  My heart didn’t give an extra half-beat—it was all so everyday and routine. Could this really be my sentence—the turning point in my life? I would have liked to feel nervous, to experience this moment to the full, but I just couldn’t. And the major had already pushed the sheet over to me, the blank side facing up. And a schoolchild’s seven-kopeck pen, with a bad point that had lint on it from the inkwell, lay there in front of me.

  “No, I have to read it myself.”

  “Do you really think I would deceive you?” the major objected lazily. “Well, go ahead, read it.”

  Unwillingly, he let the paper out of his hand. I turned it over and began to look through it with deliberate slowness, not just word by word but letter by letter. It had been typed, but what I had in front of me was not the original but a carbon:

  EXTRACT

  from a decree of the OSO of the NKVD of the U.S.S.R. of July 7, 1945, No. —.

  All of this was underscored with a dotted line and the sheet was vertically divided with a dotted line:

  Was I really just supposed to sign and leave in silence? I looked at the major—to see whether he intended to say something to me, whether he might not provide some clarification. No, he had no such intention. He had already nodded to the jailer at the door to get the next prisoner ready.

  To give the moment at least a little importance, I asked him, with a tragic expression: “But, really, this is terrible! Eight years! What for?”

  And I could hear how false my own words sounded. Neither he nor I detected anything terrible.

  “Right there.” The major showed me once again where to sign.

  I signed. I could simply not think of anything else to do.

  “In that case, allow me to write an appeal right here. After all, the sentence is unjust.”

  “As provided by regulations,” the major assented with a nod, placing my sheet of paper on the left-hand pile.

  “Let’s move along,” commanded the jailer.

  And I moved along.

  (I had not really shown much initiative. Georgi Tenno, who, to be sure, had been handed a paper worth twenty-five years, answered: “After all, this is a life sentence. In olden times they used to beat the drums and assemble a crowd when a person was given a life sentence. And here it’s like being on a list for a soap ration—twenty-five years and run along!”

  Arnold Rappoport took the pen and wrote on the back of the verdict: “I protest categorically this terroristic, illegal sentence and demand immediate release.” The officer who had handed it to him had at first waited patiently, but when he read what Rappoport had written, he was enraged and tore up the paper with the note on it. So what! The term remained in force anyway. This was just a copy.

  Vera Korneyeva was expecting fifteen years and she saw with delight that there was a typo on the official sheet—it read only five. She laughed her luminous laugh and hurried to sign before they took it back. The officer looked at her dubiously: “Do you really understand what I read to you?” “Yes, yes, thank you very much.
Five years in corrective-labor camps.”

  The ten-year sentence of Janos Rozsas, a Hungarian, was read to him in the corridor in Russian, without any translation. He signed it, not knowing it was his sentence, and he waited a long time afterward for his trial. Still later, when he was in camp, he recalled the incident very vaguely and realized what had happened.)

  The OSO was nowhere mentioned in either the Constitution or the Code. However, it turned out to be the most convenient kind of hamburger machine—easy to operate, undemanding, and requiring no legal lubrication. The Code existed on its own, and the OSO existed on its own, and it kept on deftly grinding without all the Code’s 205 articles, neither invoking them nor even mentioning them.

  As they used to joke in camp: “There is no court for nothing—for that there is an OSO.”

  Of course, the OSO itself also needed for convenience some kind of operational shorthand, but for that purpose it worked out on its own a dozen “letter” articles which made operations very much simpler. It wasn’t necessary, when they were used, to cudgel your brains trying to make things fit the formulations of the Code. And they were few enough to be easily remembered by a child. Some of them we have already described:

  ASA —Anti-Soviet Agitation

  KRD —Counter-Revolutionary Activity

  KRTD —Counter-Revolutionary Trotskyite Activity (And that “T” made the life of a zek in camp much harder.)

  PSh —Suspicion of Espionage (Espionage that went beyond the bounds of suspicion was handed over to a tribunal.)

  SVPSh —Contacts Leading (!) to Suspicion of Espionage

  KRM —Counter-Revolutionary Thought

  VAS —Dissemination of Anti-Soviet Sentiments

  SOE —Socially Dangerous Element

  SVE —Socially Harmful Element

  PD —Criminal Activity (a favorite accusation against former camp inmates if there was nothing else to be used against them)

  And then, finally, there was the very expansive category:

  ChS —Member of a Family (of a person convicted under one of the foregoing “letter” categories)

  It has to be remembered that these categories were not applied uniformly and equally among different groups and in different years. But, as with the articles of the Code and the sections in special decrees, they broke out in sudden epidemics.

  There is one more qualification. The OSO did not claim to be handing down a sentence. It did not sentence a person but, instead, imposed an administrative penalty. And that was the whole thing in a nutshell. Therefore it was, of course, natural for it to have juridical independence!

  But even though they did not claim that the administrative penalty was a court sentence, it could be up to twenty-five years and include:

  Deprivation of titles, ranks, and decorations

  Confiscation of all property

  Imprisonment

  Deprivation of the right to correspond

  Thus a person could disappear from the face of the earth with the help of the OSO even more reliably than under the terms of some primitive court sentence.

  The OSO enjoyed another important advantage in that its penalty could not be appealed. There was nowhere to appeal to. There was no appeals jurisdiction above it, and no jurisdiction beneath it. It was subordinate only to the Minister of Internal Affairs, to Stalin, and to Satan.

  Another big advantage the OSO had was speed. This speed was limited only by the technology of typewriting.

  And, last but not least, not only did the OSO not have to confront the accused face to face, which lessened the burden on interprison transport: it didn’t even have to have his photograph. At a time when the prisons were badly overcrowded, this was a great additional advantage because the prisoner did not have to take up space on the prison floor, or eat free bread once his interrogation had been completed. He could be sent off to camp immediately and put to honest work. The copy of the sentence could be read to him much later.

  All the articles of the Code had become encrusted with interpretations, directions, instructions. And if the actions of the accused are not covered by the Code, he can still be convicted:

  By analogy (What opportunities!)

  Simply because of origins (7–35: belonging to a socially dangerous milieu)

  For contacts with dangerous persons (Here’s scope for you! Who is “dangerous” and what “contacts” consist of only the judge can say.)

  But one should not complain about the precise wording of our published laws either. On January 13, 1950, a decree was issued re-establishing capital punishment. (One is bound, of course, to consider that capital punishment never did depart from Beria’s cellars.) And the decree stated that the death sentence could be imposed on subversives—diversionists. What did that mean? It didn’t say. Iosif Vissarionovich loved it that way: not to say all of it, just to hint. Did it refer only to someone who blew up rails with TNT? It didn’t say. We had long since come to know what a “diversionist” was: someone who produced goods of poor quality was a diversionist. But what was a subversive? Was someone subverting the authority of the government, for example, in a conversation on a streetcar? Or if a girl married a foreigner—wasn’t she subverting the majesty of our Motherland?

  But it is not the judge who judges. The judge only takes his pay. The directives did the judging. The directive of 1937: ten years; twenty years; execution by shooting. The directive of 1943: twenty years at hard labor; hanging. The directive of 1945: ten years for everyone, plus five of disenfranchisement (manpower for three Five-Year Plans). The directive of 1949: everyone gets twenty-five.

  The machine stamped out the sentences. The prisoner had already been deprived of all rights when they cut off his buttons on the threshold of State Security, and he couldn’t avoid a stretch. The members of the legal profession were so used to this that they fell on their faces in 1958 and caused a big scandal. The text of the projected new “Fundamental Principles of Criminal Prosecution of the U.S.S.R.” was published in the newspapers, and they’d forgotten to include any reference to possible grounds for acquittal. The government newspaper issued a mild rebuke: “The impression might be created that our courts only bring in convictions.”

  But just take the jurists’ side for a moment: why, in fact, should a trial be supposed to have two possible outcomes when our general elections are conducted on the basis of one candidate? An acquittal is, in fact, unthinkable from the economic point of view! It would mean that the informers, the Security officers, the interrogators, the prosecutor’s staff, the internal guard in the prison, and the convoy had all worked to no purpose.

  Here is one straightforward and typical case that was brought before a military tribunal. In 1941, the Security operations branch of our inactive army stationed in Mongolia was called on to show its activity and vigilance. The military medical assistant Lozovsky, who was jealous of Lieutenant Pavel Chulpenyev because of some woman, realized this. He addressed three questions to Chulpenyev when they were alone: 1. “Why, in your opinion, are we retreating from the Germans?” (Chulpenyev’s reply: “They have more equipment and they were mobilized earlier.” Lozovsky’s counter: “No, it’s a maneuver. We’re decoying them.”) 2. “Do you believe the Allies will help?” (Chulpenyev: “I believe they’ll help, but not from unselfish motives.” Lozovsky’s counter: “They are deceiving us. They won’t help us at all.”) 3. “Why was Voroshilov sent to command the Northwest Front?”

  Chulpenyev answered and forgot about them. And Lozovsky wrote a denunciation. Chulpenyev was summoned before the Political Branch of the division and expelled from the Komsomol: for a defeatist attitude, for praising German equipment, for belittling the strategy of our High Command. The loudest voice raised against him belonged to the Komsomol organizer Kalyagin, who had behaved like a coward at the battle of Khalkhin-Gol, in Chulpenyev’s presence, and therefore found it convenient to get rid of the witness once and for all.

  Chulpenyev’s arrest followed. He had one confrontation with Lo
zovsky. Their previous conversation was not even brought up by the interrogator. One question was asked: “Do you know this man?” “Yes.” “Witness, you may leave.” (The interrogator was afraid the charge might fall through.)

  Depressed by his month’s incarceration in the sort of hole in the ground we have already described, Chulpenyev appeared before a military tribunal of the 36th Motorized Division. Present were Lebedev, the Divisional Political Commissar, and Slesarev, the Chief of the Political Branch. The witness Lozovsky was not even summoned to testify. However, after the trial, to document the false testimony, they got Lozovsky’s signature and that of Political Commissar Seryegin. The questions the tribunal asked were: Did you have a conversation with Lozovsky? What did he ask you about? What were your answers? Naïvely, Chulpenyev told them. He still couldn’t understand what he was guilty of. “After all, many people talk like that!” he innocently exclaimed. The tribunal was interested: “Who? Give us their names.” But Chulpenyev was not of their breed! He had the last word. “I beg the court to give me an assignment that will mean my death so as to assure itself once more of my patriotism”—and, like a simplehearted warrior of old—“Me and the person who slandered me—both of us together.”