The Gulag Archipelago

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  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.)

  I returned to the box with a smile. It was strange. Each minute I became jollier and more relieved. Everyone was returning with "ten-ruble bills," including Valentin. The lightest term in our group that day had been given the bookkeeper who had gone out of his mind. He was still, in fact, beside himself. And the lightest term after his was mine.

  In the splashes of sun and the July breeze, the little twig outside the window continued to bob up and down as gaily as before. We chattered boisterously. Here and there, more and more frequently, laughter resounded in the box. We were laughing because everything had gone off so smoothly. We were laughing at the shocked bookkeeper. We were laughing at our morning hopes and at the way our cellmates had seen us off and arranged secret signals with us to be transmitted via food parcels—four potatoes or two bagels!

  "Well, anyway, there is going to be an amnesty!" several affirmed. "All this is just for form's sake and it doesn't mean anything. They want to give us a good scare so we'll keep in line. Stalin told an American correspondent—"

  "What was his name?"

  "I don't remember his name."

  So they ordered us to take our things, formed us up by twos, and led us once again through that same marvelous little park filled with summer. And where did they take us? Once again to the baths.

  And, oh, what a peal of laughter that got! My God, what silly nincompoops! Still roaring, we undressed, hung our duds on the same trolley hooks and rolled them into the same roaster they'd already been rolled into that very morning. Roaring, each of us took a small sliver of repulsive soap and went into the spacious, resonant shower room to wash off our girlish gaiety. We splashed about in there, pouring hot clean water on ourselves, and we got to romping about as if we were school kids who had come to the baths after their last exam. This cleansing, relieving laughter was, I think, not really sick but a living defense for the salvation of the organism.

  As we dried ourselves off, Valentin said to me, reassuringly, intimately: "Well, all right. We are still young. We are going to live a long time yet. The main thing is not to make a misstep now. We are going to a camp—and we'll not say one word to anyone, so they won't plaster new terms on us. We will work honestly—and keep our mouths shut."

  And he really believed in his program, that naive little kernel of grain caught between Stalin's millstones! He really had his hopes set on it. One wanted to agree with him, to serve out the term cozily, and then expunge from one's head what one had lived through.

  But I had begun to sense a truth inside myself: if in order to live it is necessary not to live, then what's it all for?

  One cannot really say that the OSO had been conceived after the Revolution. Catherine the Great had sentenced the journalist Novikov, whom she disliked, to fifteen years on, one might say, an OSO basis, since she didn't turn him over to a court. And all the Tsars once in a while, in a fatherly way, exiled without any trial those who had incurred their displeasure. In the 1860's, a basic court reform took place. It seemed as if rulers and subjects had both begun to develop something like a juridical view of society. And yet in the seventies and eighties Korolenko tracked down cases where administrative repression had usurped the role of judicial judgment. In 1872, he himself and two other students were exiled without trial, on the orders of the Deputy Minister of State Properties—a typical case of an OSO. Another time, he and his brother were exiled without trial to Glazov. Korolenko has also given us the name of one Fyodor Bogdan, an emissary from the peasants—a khodok—who got right up to the Tsar himself and was then exiled. And of Pyankov, too, who was acquitted by a court and yet exiled by order of the Tsar. And there were several others as well. And Vera Zasulich explained in a letter sent after she emigrated that she had not run away from the court and a trial but from nonjudicial administrative repression.

  Thus the tradition of the "dotted line"—the administratively issued sentence—dragged on. But it was too lax; it was suitable for a drowsy Asiatic country, but not for a country that was rapidly advancing. . . . Moreover, it lacked any definite identity: who was the OSO? Sometimes it was the Tsar, sometimes the governor, sometimes the deputy minister. And if it was still possible to enumerate names and cases, this was not, begging your pardon, real scope.

  Real scope entered the picture with the twenties, when permanently operating Troikas—panels of three, operating behind closed doors—were created to bypass the courts permanently. In the beginning they even flaunted it proudly—the Troika of the GPU. Not only did they not conceal the names of the members; they publicized them. Who on the Solovetsky Islands did not know the names of the famous Moscow Troika—Gleb Boky, Vul, and Vasilyev? Yes, and what a word it was, in fact—troika! It bore a slight hint of sleigh bells on the shaft bow; the celebration of Shrovetide; and, interwoven with all this, a mystery. Why "troika"? What did it mean? After all, a court wasn't a quartet either! And a Troika wasn't a court! And the biggest mystery of all lay in the fact that it was kept out of sight. We hadn't been there. We hadn't seen it. All we got was a piece of paper. Sign here! The Troika was even more frightening than a Revolutionary Tribunal. It set itself even farther apart, muffled itself up, locked itself in a separate room, and—soon—concealed the names of its members. Thus we grew used to the idea that the Troika members didn't eat or drink or move about among ordinary people. Once they had isolated themselves in order to go into session, they were shut off for good, and all we knew of them were the sentences handed out through typists. (And they had to be returned too. Such documents couldn't be left in the hands of individuals!)

  These Troikas (we use the plural just in case, because—as with a deity—we never know where or in what form it exists) satisfied a persistent need that had arisen: never to allow those arrested to return to freedom (This was like an OTK—a Department for Quality Control in industry—but in this case it was attached to the GPU—to prevent any spoiled goods.) If it turned out that someone was innocent and could therefore not be tried at all, then let him have his "minus 32" via the Troika—which meant he couldn't live in any of the provincial capitals—or let him spend two or three years in exile, after which he would have a convict's clipped ear, would always be a marked man, and, from then on, a recidivist.

  (Please forgive us, reader. We have once more gone astray with this rightist opportunism—this concept of "guilt," and of the guilty or innocent. It has, after all, been explained to us that the heart of the matter is not personal guilt, but social danger. One can imprison an innocent person if he is socially hostile. And one can release a guilty man if he is socially friendly. But lacking legal training, we can be forgiven, for the 1926 Code, according to which, my good fellow, we lived for twenty-five years and more, was itself criticized for an "impermissible bourgeois approach," for an "insufficiently class-conscious approach," and for some kind of "bourgeois weighing of punishments in relation to the gravity of what had been committed.")

  Alas, it is not for us to write the absorbing history of this partic
ular Organ: how the Troikas turned into OSO's; or when they got renamed; or whether there were OSO's in provincial centers, or just one of them in the Great Palace; or which of our great and proud leaders were members; or how often they met and how long their sessions lasted; whether or not they were served tea while they worked, and if they were, what was served with the tea; and how the work itself proceeded—did they converse while it was going on or not? We are not the ones who will write this history—because we don't know. All that we have heard is that the essence of the OSO was triune. And even though it is still impossible to name its industrious members, yet we do know the three organs permanently represented there: one member represented the Central Committee of the Party, one the MVD, and one the Chief Prosecutor's office. However, it would not be a miracle if we should learn someday that there were never any sessions, and that there was only a staff of experienced typists composing extracts from nonexistent records of proceedings, and one general administrator who directed the typists. As for typists, there were certainly typists. That we can guarantee.

  Up to 1924, the authority of the Troika was limited to sentences of three years, maximum. From 1924 on, they moved up to five years of camp; from 1937 on, the OSO could turn out "ten-ruble bills"; after 1948, they could rivet a "quarter"—twenty-five years—on you. And there are people—Chavdarov, for example—who know that during the war years the OSO even sentenced prisoners to execution by shooting. Nothing unusual about this.

  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 inter-prison 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.

  It used to be that in favorable conditions the prisoners were unloaded from freight cars at their destinations. And they were made to kneel down right there, next to the tracks—as a pre-caution against attempted escape. But it looked as if they were praying to the OSO. And then and there their sentences were read out to them. It could also happen differently. In 1938 those who arrived at Perebory on prisoner transports did not know either their Code articles or their sentences, but the clerk who met them knew, and he looked them up on the list: SVE—Socially Harmful Element—five years. That was during the time when there was an urgent need for many hands to work on the Moscow-Volga Canal.

  Others worked in the camps for months without knowing their sentences. After this, as I. Dobryak reported, they were solemnly lined up—and not just on any old day, but on May 1, 1938, when the red flags were flying—and the Stalino Province Troika's sentences were announced. (This would indicate that the OSO did get decentralized in times of heavy load.) These sentences were from ten to twenty years apiece. And in that same year, my former camp foreman, Sinebryukhov, was sent off with a whole trainload of uasentenced prisoners from Chelyabinsk to Cherepovets. Months passed and the zeks worked away. And then one rest day in winter (Note the days? Another advantage of the OSO), when the frost was cracking, they were driven out into the courtyard and lined up. A newly arrived lieutenant appeared and introduced himself as having come to inform them of their OSO penalties. But he turned out to be a decent sort because he squinted at their thin footwear and at the sun's rays in the steaming frost and said:

  "Well anyway, men, why should you freeze out here? The OSO gave you all ten years apiece. There are just a very, very few who got eight. You understand? Disssperse!"

  But in view of the frankly mechanical operation of the Special Board, why have any courts at all? Why use a horsecar when there's a noiseless modern streetcar available, which no one can jump out of? Is it a matter of keeping the judges well fed?

  Still, it is really quite indecent for a democratic state not to have courts. In 1919, the Eighth Congress of the Party proclaimed in its program: Efforts must be made to involve all the working population in the exercise of judicial duties. It did not prove possible to involve "all" the working population. Conducting a trial is a delicate business. But there was no question of getting along entirely without courts.

  However, our political courts—the special collegia of provincial courts, the military tribunals (and why, actually, should there be military tribunals in peacetime anyway?), and all the supreme courts too—unanimously followed the path of the OSO. They, too, did not get stuck in the mud of public trials or in arguments between sides.

  Their primary and principal distinguishing feature was closed doors. They were first of all closed courts—for their own convenience.

  And by now we have become so accustomed to the fact that millions and millions of people were tried in closed sess
ions and have become used to this for so long that now and then some mixed-up son, brother, or nephew of a prisoner will even snort at you with conviction: "And what would you have wanted? . . .

  There's information here. Our enemies will find out! You can't do it!"

  Thus the fear that our "enemies will find out" makes us clamp our head between our own knees. Who in our Fatherland, except some bookworms, remembers now that Karakozov, who fired at the Tsar, was provided with a defense lawyer? Or that Zhelyabov and all the Narodnaya Volya group were tried in public, without any fear that the "Turks would find out"? Or that Vera Zasulich, who attempted to kill the official who was, translated into Soviet terms, the Chief of the Moscow Administration of the MVD—although she missed, and the bullet went past his head—not only was not destroyed in a torture chamber but was acquitted in open court by a jury—no Troika—and then went off in triumph in a carriage?

  Despite these comparisons, I do not at all mean to say that a perfect system of courts and justice ever existed in Russia. In all probability, an excellent judicial system is the last fruit of the most mature society, or else one needs a Solomon. Vladimir Dal notes that in the period before the emancipation of the serfs Russia had "not one single proverb containing any praise of the courts." And that really means something. It seems likely that they never had time to get around to making up a proverb praising the zemstvo chiefs either. But, nevertheless, the judicial reform of 1864 at least set the urban sector of our society on the road toward those English models which Herzen praised so highly.

  Saying all this, I still have not forgotten what Dostoyevsky had to say in his Diary of a Writer against our trials by jury: about the excesses of some lawyers' eloquence ("Gentlemen of the jury! What kind of woman would she have been if she had not stabbed her rival? Gentlemen of the jury! Who among you would not have thrown the child out of the window?"); and the risk that a juror's momentary impulse might outweigh his civic responsibility. But spiritually Dostoyevsky far outstripped the realities of our life, and he worried about what he shouldn't have worried about! He believed that we had achieved open trials once and for all! (Indeed, who among his contemporaries could have believed in the OSO?) And somewhere else he writes: "It is better to err on the side of mercy than on that of the death penalty." Oh, yes, yes, yes!