The Gulag Archipelago

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  The loneliness surrounding the entire prison struggle of the socialists, which became more hopeless with every year that passed, grew more and more acute, approaching a vacuum in the end. That was not how it had been under the Tsar: Throw open the prison doors and the public greeted them with flowers. Now they leafed through the newspapers and saw that they were being drenched in vituperation, with slops even. (For it was the socialists, after all, whom Stalin saw as the most dan- gerous enemies of his socialism.) And the people were silent. And what could give them any reason to dare suppose that the people had any kindly feelings left toward those they had not long before elected to the Constituent Assembly? And finally the newspapers stopped showering profanity on them because Rus- sian socialists had by that time come to seem so unimportant and so impotent and even nonexistent. By this time these socialists were remembered outside in freedom only as something belong- ing to the past—the distant past. And young people hadn't the slightest idea that SR's and Mensheviks were still alive some- where. And in the sequence of Chimkent and Cherdyn exile, and the Verkhne-Uralsk and Vladimir isolators—how could they not tremble in their dark solitary-confinement cells, cells with "muzzles" by this time, and feel that perhaps their program and their leaders had been mistaken, that perhaps their tactics and actions had been mistaken too? And all their actions began to seem nothing but inaction—and their lives, devoted only to suffering, a fatal delusion.

  Their lonely prison struggle had been essentially undertaken for all of us, for all future prisoners (even though they themselves might not think so, nor understand this), for how we would exist in imprisonment and how we would be kept there. And if they had won out, then probably nothing of what happened to us would have happened, nothing of what this book is about, all seven of its parts.

  But they were beaten. They failed to protect either themselves or us.

  In part, too, the canopy of loneliness spread over them because, in the very first postrevolutionary years, having naturally accepted from the GPU the well-merited identification of politicals, they naturally agreed with the GPU that all who were "to the right" [ I do not like these "left" and "right" classifications; they are conditional concepts, they are loosely bandied about, and they do not convey the essence.] of them, beginning with the Cadets, were not politicals but KR's —Counter-Revolutionaries—the manure of history. And they also regarded as KR's those who suffered for their faith in Christ. And whoever didn't know what "right" or "left" meant —and that, in the future, would be all of us—they considered to be KR's also. And thus it was that, in part voluntarily, in part involuntarily, keeping themselves aloof and shunning others, they gave their blessing to the future "Fifty-eight" into whose maw they themselves would disappear.

  Objects and actions change their aspect quite decisively de- pending on the position of the observer. In this chapter we have been describing the prison stand of the socialists from their point of view. And, as you see, it is illuminated by a pure and tragic light. But those KR's whom the politicals treated so con- temptuously on Solovki, those KR's recall the politicals in their own way! "The politicals? What a nasty crowd they were: they looked down their noses at everyone else; they stuck to their own group; they demanded their own special rations all the time and their own special privileges. And they kept quarreling among themselves incessantly." And how can one but feel that there is truth here too? All those fruitless and endless arguments which by now are merely comical. And those demands for additional rations for themselves in comparison with the masses of the hungry and impoverished? In the Soviet period, the honorable appellation of politicals turned out to be a poisoned gift. And then another reproach followed immediately: Why was it that the socialists, who used to escape so easily under the Tsar, had become so soft in Soviet prisons? Where are their escapes? In general there were quite a few escapes, but who can remember any socialists among them?

  And, in turn, those prisoners "to the left" of the socialists—the Trotskyites and the Communists—shunned the socialists, con- sidering them exactly the same kind of KR's as the rest, and they closed the moat of isolation around them with an encircling ring.

  The Trotskyites and the Communists, each considering their own direction more pure and lofty than all the rest, despised and even hated the socialists (and each other) who were imprisoned behind the bars of the same buildings and went outdoors to walk in the same prison courtyards. Yekaterina Olitskaya recalls that in 1937, at the transit prison on Vanino Bay, when the socialists called to each other across the fence between the men's and women's compounds, looking for fellow socialists and report- ing news, the Communists Liza Kotik and Mariya Krutikova were indignant because they might bring down punishment on them all by such irresponsible behavior. They said: "All our mis- fortunes are due to those socialist rats! [A profound explanation, and so dialectical too!] They should be choked!" And those two girls in the Lubyanka in 1925, whom I have already mentioned, sang about spring and lilacs only because one of them was an SR and the second a member of the Communist opposition, and they had no political song in common, and in fact the Com- munist-deviationist girl shouldn't really have joined the SR girl in her protest at all.

  And if in a Tsarist prison the different parties often joined forces in a common struggle (let us recall in this connection the escape from the Sevastopol Central Prison), in Soviet prisons each political group tried to ensure its own purity by steering clear of the others. The Trotskyites struggled on their own, apart from the socialists and Communists; the Communists didn't struggle at all, for how could one allow oneself to struggle against one's own government and one's own prison?

  It turned out in consequence that the Communists in isolators and in prisons for long-termers were restricted earlier and more cruelly than others. In 1928, in the Yaroslavl Central Prison, the Communist Nadezhda Surovtseva went outdoors for fresh air in a single-file column that was forbidden to engage in con- versation, while the socialists were still chattering in their own groups. She was not permitted to tend the flowers in the courtyard —because they had been left by previous prisoners who had struggled for their rights. And they deprived her of newspapers too. (However, the Secret Political Department of the GPU permitted her to have complete sets of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Hegel in her cell.) Her mother's visit to her took place virtually in the dark, and her downcast mother died soon after- ward. (What must she have thought of her daughter's circum- stances in prison?)

  The difference between the treatment of socialist prisoners and that of the Communists persisted many years, went far beyond this, and extended to a difference in rewards: in 1937-1938 the socialists were imprisoned like the rest and they all got their tenners too. But, as a rule, they were not forced to denounce themselves: they had, after all, never hidden their own, special, individual views—which were quite enough to get them sen- tenced. But a Communist had no special, individual views, so what, then, was he to be sentenced for if a self-denunciation wasn't forced out of him?

  Even though the enormous Archipelago was already spreading across the land, the prisons for long-termers didn't fall into decay. The old jail tradition was being zealously carried on. Every- thing new and invaluable which the Archipelago had contributed to the indoctrination of the masses was still not enough in itself.

  The deficiency was provided for by the complementary existence of the TON's—the Special Purpose Prisons—and prisons for long-termers in general.

  Not everyone swallowed up by the Great Machine was allowed to mingle with the natives of the Archipelago. Well-known foreigners, individuals who were too famous or who were being held secretly, purged gaybisty, could not by any means be seen openly in camps; their hauling a barrow did not compensate for the disclosure and the consequent moral-political damage.

  [This term actually exists! And it has a sky-blue swampy coloration!]

  In the same way, the socialists, who were engaged in a continuous struggle for their prison rights, could not conceivably be permitted t
o mingle with the masses but had to be kept separately and, in fact, suffocated separately—in view of their special privileges and rights. Much later on, in the fifties, as we shall learn later in this work, the Special Purpose Prisons were also needed to isolate camp rebels. And in the last years of his life, disappointed in the possibilities of "reforming" thieves, Stalin gave orders that various ringleaders of the thieves should also get tyurzak rather than camp. And then, to be sure, it was necessary for the state to support free of charge in prison those prisoners who because of their feebleness would have immediately died off in camp and would thus have shirked their duty to serve out their terms. And others who couldn't possibly be used in camp work—like the blind Kopeikin, a man of seventy who used to sit all day long in the market in Yuryevets on the Volga. His songs and facetious comments won him ten years for KRD—Counter-Revolutionary Activity—but in his case they had to substitute prison for camp.

  The inventory of old jails, inherited from the Romanov dynasty, was, of necessity, looked after, remodeled, strengthened, and perfected. Certain central prisons, like the one in Yaroslavl, were so well and suitably appointed (doors plated with iron; table, stool, and cot permanently anchored in each cell) that the only thing required to bring them up to date was the installation of "muzzles" on the windows and the fencing in of the courtyards where the prisoners walked in order to reduce them to the size of a cell (by 1937 all the trees on prison grounds had been cut down, all vegetable gardens plowed under, and all grassy areas paved with asphalt). Others, like the one in Suzdal, required new equipment, and the monastery arrangement had to be remodeled, but, after all, self-incarceration of a body in a monastery and its incarceration in a prison by the state serve physically similar purposes, and therefore the buildings were always easy to adapt. One of the buildings of the Sukhanovka Monastery was adapted for use as a prison for long-termers. Of course, it was also neces- sary to make up for losses from the Tsarist inventory: the con- version of the Peter and Paul Fortress in Leningrad and of Schlüsselburg near Leningrad into museums for tourists. The Vladimir Central Prison was expanded and added to—with a big new building constructed under Yezhov. It was heavily used and garnered many prisoners over those decades. We have already mentioned how the Tobolsk Central Prison was in- augurated, and that Verkhne-Uralsk was opened in 1925 for continuous and abundant use. (To our misfortune, all these isola- tors are still in use and are in operation at the moment these lines are being written.) From Tvardovsky's poem "Distance Beyond Distance" one can draw the conclusion that the Aleksandrovsk Central Prison wasn't empty in Stalin's time either. We have less information about the one in Orel: it is feared that it suffered serious damage during World War II. But not far from it was the well-equipped prison for long-termers in Dmitrovsk-Or- lovsky.

  During the twenties the prisoner's food was very decent in the isolators for politicals (still called "politizakrytki"—"political lock-ups"—by the prisoners): the lunches always included some meat; fresh vegetables were served; milk could be bought in the commissary. In 1931-1933 the food deteriorated sharply, but things were no better out in freedom at that time. Both scurvy and dizziness from lack of food were no rarity in the prisons for politicals in those years. Later on the food improved, but it was never the same as before. In 1947, in the Vladimir TON, I. Korneyev was constantly hungry: one pound of bread, two pieces of sugar, two hot dishes which were not at all filling; the only thing available in unlimited quantities was boiling water. (It will, of course, be said once more that this was not a typical year and there was hunger outside in freedom, too, at the time. This was when they generously allowed freedom to feed prison: unlimited parcels were permitted.) The light in cells was always "rationed," so to speak, in both the thirties and the forties: the "muzzles" on the windows and the frosted reinforced glass created a perma- nent twilight in the cells (darkness is an important factor in causing depression). They often stretched netting above the window "muzzle," and in the winter it was covered with snow, which cut off this last access to the light. Reading became no more than a way of ruining one's eyes. In the Vladimir TON, they made up for this lack of light at night: bright electric lights burned all night long, preventing sleep. And in the Dmitrovsk Prison in 1938 (N. A. Kozyrev), there was light in the evenings and at night—a kerosene lamp on a little shelf way up near the ceiling, that burned away and smoked up the last air; in 1939 there were electric lights that glowed red at half-voltage. Air was "rationed" too. The hinged panes for ventilation were kept locked, and opened only during the interval of the prisoners' trip to the toilet, as prisoners recall from both Dmitrovsk and Yaroslavl prisons. (Y. Ginzburg: The bread grew moldy between morning and lunchtime; the sheets were damp, and the walls green.) In Vladimir in 1948 there was no lack of air, because the transom was open permanently. Walks outdoors ranged from fifteen to forty-five minutes at various hours in various prisons.

  There was no such thing as the communication with the soil that had existed in Schlüsselburg or Solovki; everything that grew had been torn up by the roots, trampled, covered with concrete and asphalt. They even forbade lifting up one's head to the heavens during the walks: "Look at your feet!" This was the command both Kozyrev and Adamova remember from the Kazan Prison. Visits from relatives were forbidden in 1937 and never renewed. Letters could be sent to close relatives twice a month and could be received from them in most years. (But in Kazan they had to be returned to the administration the day after they had been read.) Access to the commissary to make purchases with the money sent in specifically limited amounts was usually permitted. Furniture was no unimportant part of the prison regimen. Adamova wrote eloquently of her happiness at finding a simple wooden cot with a straw mattress and a simple wooden table in her cell in Suzdal, after having had only cots that folded into the wall and chairs anchored to the floor. In the Vladimir TON, I. Korneyev experienced two different prison regimens:

  Under one, in 1947-1948, personal articles were not removed from the cell; one could lie down during the day; and the turnkey very seldom looked through the peephole. But under the other, in 1949-1953, the cell was locked with two locks (the respon- sibility of the turnkey and duty officer respectively); one was for- bidden to lie down, forbidden to talk in a normal voice (in Kazan, only in a whisper) ; personal articles were all taken away; a uniform of striped mattress ticking was issued; correspondence was permitted only twice a year and only on those days announced without warning by the chief of the prison (anyone who missed that day couldn't write), and only a sheet of paper half the size of a postal sheet could be used; violent searches and unscheduled visits were frequent, requiring the complete turning out of one's belongings and undressing down to one's skin. Communication between cells was prohibited to such an extent that the jailers went through the toilets with a portable lantern after each toilet visit and searched in each hole. The entire cell would get punish- ment cells for graffiti in the toilets. The punishment cells were a scourge in the Special Purpose Prisons. One could get into a punishment cell for coughing. ("Cover your head with your blanket. Then you can cough!") Or for walking around the cell (Kozyrev: "It was considered to be rebellious"); for the noise made by one's shoes. (In the Kazan Prison women had been issued men's shoes that were much too large for women's feet— size 10½.) Incidentally, Ginzburg was correct in concluding that periods in a punishment cell were meted out not for any particular misdemeanor but according to a schedule: every pri- soner was required to spend some time there in order to learn what it was like. And the rules included another generally appli- cable point: "In the event of any display of unruliness in a punish- ment cell [?], the chief of the prison has the right to extend the term of incarceration there to twenty days." Just what was meant by unruliness? Here's what happened to Kozyrev. (The descrip- tions of the punishment cell and much else in the prison regimen tally to such an extent among all sources that the stamp of a single system of administrative rules can be detected.) He was given another five days in the punishment ce
ll for pacing back and forth. In the autumn, the building containing the punishment cells was unheated, and it was very cold. They forced prisoners to undress down to their underwear and to take off their shoes. The floor was bare earth and dust (it might be wet dirt; and in the Kazan Prison it might even be covered with water). Kozyrev had a stool in his. (Ginzburg had none in hers.) He immediately concluded that he would perish, that he would freeze to death.

  But some kind of mysterious inner warmth gradually made itself felt, and it was his salvation. He learned to sleep sitting on his stool. They gave him a mug of hot water three times a day; it made him drunk. One of the duty officers, in violation of the rules, pressed a piece of sugar into his ten-and-a-half-ounce bread ration. On the basis of the rations issued him, and by observing the light from some faraway, tiny, labyrinthine window, Kozyrev kept count of the days. His five days had come to an end, but he had not been released. His sense of hearing had be- come extremely acute and he heard whispers in the corridor— having to do with either "the sixth" or "six days." This was a provocation: they were waiting for him to say that his five days were over and that it was time to let him out. That would have constituted unruliness, for which his stay in the punishment cell would have been prolonged. But he sat silent and obedient for another day, and then they let him out, just as if everything had been the way it was supposed to be. (Perhaps the chief of the prison used this method for testing all the prisoners in turn for submissiveness? And then he could sentence all those who weren't yet submissive enough to further terms in the punishment cell.) After the punishment cell the ordinary cell seemed like a palace. Kozyrev became deaf for half a year, and he began to get abscesses in his throat. His cellmate went insane from frequent imprisonment in the punishment cell, and Kozyrev was kept locked up with an insane man for more than a year, with just the two of them there. (Nadezhda Surovtseva recalls many cases of insanity in political isolators—she herself recalls as many as Novorussky totaled up in the whole chronicle of Schlüsselburg. )