And one who concealed an enemy was also an enemy! And one who abetted an enemy was also an enemy! And one who continued his friendship with an enemy was also an enemy. And the telephone of the accursed family fell silent. And in the hustle of a big city people felt as if they were in a desert.
And that was precisely what Stalin needed! And he laughed in his mustaches, the shoeshine boy!
In evaluating 1937 for the Archipelago, we refused it the title of the crowning glory. But here, in talking about freedom, we have to grant it this corroded crown of betrayal; one has to admit that this was the particular year that broke the soul of our freedom and opened it wide to corruption on a mass scale.
Yet even this was not yet the end of our society! (As we see today, the end never did come—the living thread of Russia survived, hung on until better times came in 1956, and it is now less than ever likely to die.) The resistance was not overt. It did not beautify the epoch of the universal fall, but with its invisible warm veins its heart kept on beating, beating, beating, beating.
Every act of resistance to the government required heroism quite out of proportion to the magnitude of the act. It was safer to keep dynamite during the rule of Alexander II than it was to shelter the orphan of an enemy of the people under Stalin. Nonetheless, how many such children were taken in and saved . . . Let the children themselves tell their stories. And secret assistance to families . . . did occur. And there was someone who took the place of an arrested person’s wife who had been in a hopeless line for three days, so that she could go in to get warm and get some sleep. And there was also someone who went off with pounding heart to warn someone else that an ambush was waiting for him at his apartment and that he must not return there. And there was someone who gave a fugitive shelter, even though he himself did not sleep that night.
Nowadays it is quite convenient to declare that arrest was a lottery (Ehrenburg). Yes, it was a lottery all right, but some of the numbers were “fixed.” They threw out a general dragnet and arrested in accordance with assigned quota figures, yes, but every person who objected publicly they grabbed that very minute! And it turned into a selection on the basis of soul, not a lottery! Those who were bold fell beneath the ax, were sent off to the Archipelago—and the picture of the monotonously obedient freedom remained unruffled. All those who were purer and better could not stay in that society; and without them it kept getting more and more trashy. You would not notice these quiet departures at all. But they were, in fact, the dying of the soul of the people.
7. Corruption. In a situation of fear and betrayal over many years people survive unharmed only in a superficial, bodily sense. And inside . . . they become corrupt.
So many millions of people agreed to become stool pigeons. And, after all, if some forty to fifty million people served long sentences in the Archipelago during the course of the thirty-five years up to 1953, including those who died—and this is a modest estimate, being only three or four times the population of Gulag at any one time, and, after all, during the war the death rate there was running one percent per day—then we can assume that at least every third or at least every fifth case was the consequence of somebody’s denunciation and that somebody was willing to provide evidence as a witness! All of them, all those murderers with ink, are still among us today. And most often they are prospering. And we still rejoice that they are “our ordinary Soviet people.”
8. The Lie as a Form of Existence. Whether giving in to fear, or influenced by material self-interest or envy, people can’t nonetheless become stupid so swiftly. Their souls may be thoroughly muddied, but they still have a sufficiently clear mind. They cannot believe that all the genius of the world has suddenly concentrated itself in one head with a flattened, low-hanging forehead. They simply cannot believe the stupid and silly images of themselves which they hear over the radio, see in films, and read in the newspapers. Nothing forces them to speak the truth in reply, but no one allows them to keep silent! They have to talk! And what else but a lie? They have to applaud madly, and no one requires honesty of them.
The permanent lie becomes the only safe form of existence, in the same way as betrayal. Every wag of the tongue can be overheard by someone, every facial expression observed by someone. Therefore every word, if it does not have to be a direct lie, is nonetheless obliged not to contradict the general, common lie. There exists a collection of ready-made phrases, of labels, a selection of ready-made lies. And not one single speech nor one single essay or article nor one single book—be it scientific, journalistic, critical, or “literary,” so-called—can exist without the use of these primary clichés. In the most scientific of texts it is required that someone’s false authority or false priority be upheld somewhere, and that someone be cursed for telling the truth; without this lie even an academic work cannot see the light of day. And what can be said about those shrill meetings and trashy lunch-break gatherings where you are compelled to vote against your own opinion, to pretend to be glad over what distresses you?
In prison Tenno recalled with shame how two weeks before his own arrest he had lectured the sailors on “The Stalinist Constitution—The Most Democratic in the World.” And of course not one word of it was sincere.
There is no man who has typed even one page . . . without lying. There is no man who has spoken from a rostum . . . without lying. There is no man who has spoken into a microphone . . . without lying.
But if only it had all ended there! After all, it went further than that: every conversation with the management, every conversation in the Personnel Section, every conversation of any kind with any other Soviet person called for lies. And if your idiot interlocutor said to you face to face that the Colorado beetles had been dropped on us by the Americans—it was necessary to agree! (And a shake of the head instead of a nod might well cost you resettlement in the Archipelago. Remember the arrest of Chulpenyov, in Part I, Chapter 7.)
But that was not all: Your children were growing up! And if the children were still little, then you had to decide what was the best way to bring them up; whether to start them off on lies instead of the truth (so that it would be easier for them to live) and then to lie forevermore in front of them too; or to tell them the truth, with the risk that they might make a slip, that they might let it out, which meant that you had to instill into them from the start that the truth was murderous, that beyond the threshold of the house you had to lie, only lie, just like papa and mama.
The choice was really such that you would rather not have any children.
9. Cruelty. And where among all the preceding qualities was there any place left for kindheartedness? How could one possibly preserve one’s kindness while pushing away the hands of those who were drowning? Once you have been steeped in blood, you can only become more cruel. And, anyway, cruelty (“class cruelty”) was praised and instilled, and you would soon lose track, probably, of just where between bad and good that trait lay. And when you add that kindness was ridiculed, that pity was ridiculed, that mercy was ridiculed—you’d never be able to chain all those who were drunk on blood!
10. Slave Psychology.
In various parts of our country we find a certain piece of sculpture: a plaster guard with a police dog which is straining forward in order to sink its teeth into someone. In Tashkent there is one right in front of the NKVD school, and in Ryazan it is like a symbol of the city, the one and only monument to be seen if you approach from the direction of Mikhailov.
And we do not even shudder in revulsion. We have become accustomed to these figures setting dogs onto people as if they were the most natural things in the world.
Setting the dogs onto us.
PART V
Katorga
Chapter 1
The Doomed
REVOLUTION IS OFTEN rash in its generosity. It is in such a hurry to disown so much. Take the word katorga, for instance. Now, katorga is a good word, a word with some weight in it. (It means “hard labor” or “penal servitude,” and it was in use d
uring the time of the Tsars.) Katorga descends from the judicial bench like the blade of a guillotine, stops short of beheading the prisoner but breaks his spine, shatters all hope there and then in the courtroom.
Stalin was very fond of old words. And twenty-six years after the February Revolution had abolished “katorga,” Stalin reintroduced it.
Little attempt was made to conceal the purpose of these katorga camps: the katorzhane were to be done to death. These were, undisguisedly, murder camps: but in the Gulag tradition murder was protracted, so that the doomed would suffer longer and put a little work in before they died.
They were housed in “tents,” seven meters by twenty, of the kind common in the north. Surrounded with boards and sprinkled with sawdust, the tent became a sort of flimsy hut. It was meant to hold eighty people, if they were on bunk beds, or one hundred on sleeping platforms. But katorzhane were put into them two hundred at a time.
Yet there was no reduction of average living space—just a rational utilization of accommodation. The katorzhane were put on a twelve-hour working day with two shifts, and no rest days, so that there were always one hundred at work and one hundred in the hut.
At work they were cordoned off by guards with dogs, beaten whenever anybody felt like it, urged on to greater efforts by Tommy guns. On their way back to the living area their ranks might be raked with Tommy-gun fire for no good reason, and the soldiers would not have to answer for the casualties. Even at a distance a column of exhausted katorzhane was easily identified—no ordinary prisoners dragged themselves so hopelessly, so painfully along.
Their twelve working hours were measured out in full to the last tedious minute.
Those quarrying stone for roadmaking in the polar blizzards of Norilsk were allowed ten minutes for a warm-up once in the course of a twelve-hour shift. And then their twelve-hour rest was wasted in the silliest way imaginable. Part of these twelve hours went into moving them from one camp area to another, parading them, searching them. Once in the living area, they were immediately taken into a “tent” which was never ventilated—a windowless hut—and locked in. In winter a foul sour stench hung so heavy in the damp air that no one unused to it could endure it for two minutes. The living area was even less accessible to the katorzhane than the camp work area. They were never allowed to go to the latrine, nor to the mess hut, nor to the Medical Section. All their needs were served by the latrine bucket and the feeding hatch. Such was Stalin’s katorga as it took shape in 1943–1944: a combination of all that was worst in the camps with all that was worst in the prisons.
Their twelve hours of rest also included inspections, morning and evening—a full and formal roll call. Then again, food was distributed twice in the course of these twelve hours: mess tins were passed through the feeding hatch, and through the feeding hatch they were collected again.
According to the camp records, which were not meant to preserve for history the fact that political prisoners were also starved to death, they were entitled to supplementary “miner’s rations” and “bonus dishes,” which were miserable enough even before three lots of thieves got at them. This was another lengthy procedure conducted through the feeding hatch—names were called out one by one, and dishes exchanged for coupons. And when at last you were about to collapse onto the sleeping platform and fall asleep, the hatch would drop again, once again names were called, and they would start reissuing the same coupons for use the next day.
So that out of twelve leisure hours in the cell, barely four remained for undisturbed sleep.
Then again, katorzhane were of course paid no money, nor had they any right to receive parcels or letters.
The katorzhane responded nicely to this treatment and quickly died.
But I can already hear angry cries from my compatriots and contemporaries. Stop! Who are these people of whom you dare to speak? Yes! They were there to be destroyed—and rightly so! Why, these were traitors, Polizei, burgomasters! They got what they asked for! Surely you are not sorry for them? And the women there were German bedstraw, I hear women’s voices crying.
First, a few words about our women. Did not the whole of world literature (before Stalin) rapturously proclaim that love could not be contained by national boundaries? By the will of generals and diplomats? But once again we have adopted Stalin’s yardstick: except as decreed by the Supreme Soviet, thou shalt not mate! Your body is, first and foremost, the property of the Fatherland.
Before we go any further, how old were these women when they closed with the enemy in bed instead of in battle? Certainly under thirty, and often no more than twenty-five. Which means that from their first childhood impression onward they had been educated after the October Revolution, been brought up in Soviet schools and on Soviet ideology! So that our anger was for the work of our own hands? Some of these girls had taken to heart what we had tirelessly dinned into them for fifteen years on end—that there is no such thing as one’s own country, that the Fatherland is a reactionary fiction. Others had grown a little bored with our puritanical Lenten fare of meetings, conferences, and demonstrations, of films without kisses and dancing at arm’s length. And yet others were simply hungry—yes, hungry in the most primitive sense: they had nothing to put in their bellies.
But who is really to blame for all this? Who? I ask you. Those women? Or—fellow countrymen, contemporaries—we ourselves, all of us? What was it in us that made the occupying troops much more attractive to our women? Was this not one of the innumerable penalties which we are continually paying, and will be paying for a long time yet, for the path we so hastily chose and have so stumblingly followed, with never a look back at our losses, never a cautious look ahead?
“All right, then, but the men at least were in for good reasons? They were traitors to their country, and to their class.”
Since we have begun, let us go on.
What about the schoolteachers? Those whom our army in its panicky recoil abandoned with their schools, and pupils, for a year. For two years, or even for three. The quartermasters had been stupid, the generals no good—so what must the teachers do now? Teach their children or not teach them? And what were the kids to do—not kids of fifteen, who could earn a wage, or join the partisans, but the little kids? Learn their lessons, or live like sheep for two or three years to atone for the Supreme Commander’s mistakes? If daddy doesn’t give you a cap you let your ears freeze—is that it?
For some reason no such question ever arose either in Denmark or in Norway or in Belgium or in France. In those countries it was not felt that a people placed under German rule by its own foolish government or by force of overwhelming circumstances must thereupon stop living altogether. In those countries schools went on working, as did railways and local government.
Somebody’s brains (theirs, of course!) are 180 degrees out of true. Because in our country teachers received anonymous letters from the partisans: “Don’t dare teach! You will be made to pay for it!” Working on the railways also became collaboration with the enemy. As for participation in local administration—that was treason, unprecedented in its enormity.
Everybody knows that a child who once drops out of school may never return to it. Just because the greatest strategic genius of all times and all nations had made a blooper, was the grass to wither till he righted it or could it keep growing? Should children be taught in the meantime, or shouldn’t they?
Of course, a price would have to be paid. Pictures of the big mustache would have to be taken out of school, and pictures of the little mustache perhaps brought in. The children would gather round the tree at Christmas instead of New Year’s, and at this ceremony (as also on some imperial anniversary substituted for that of the October Revolution) the headmaster would have to deliver a speech in praise of the splendid new life, however bad things really were. But similar speeches had been made in the past—and life had been just as bad then.
Or rather, you had to be more of a hypocrite before, had to tell the children many more lies—beca
use the lies had had time to mature, and to permeate the syllabus in versions painstakingly elaborated by experts on teaching technique and by school inspectors. In every lesson, whether it was pertinent or not, whether you were studying the anatomy of worms or the use of conjunctions in complex sentences, you were required to take a kick at God (even if you yourself believed in Him); you could not omit singing the praises of our boundless freedom (even if you had lain awake expecting a knock in the night); whether you were reading Turgenev to the class or tracing the course of the Dnieper with your ruler, you had to anathematize the poverty-stricken past and hymn our present plenty (though long before the war you and the children had watched whole villages dying of hunger, and in the towns a child’s ration had been 300 grams).
None of this was considered a sin against the truth, against the soul of the child, or against the Holy Ghost.
Whereas now, under the temporary and still unsettled occupation regime, far fewer lies had to be told—but they stood the old ones on their heads, that was the trouble! So it was that the voice of the Fatherland, and the pencil of the underground Party Committee, forbade you to teach children their native language, geography, arithmetic, and science. Twenty years of katorga for work of that sort!
The Gulag Archipelago Page 39