The Gulag Archipelago

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  Barge transport on the Yenisei came to be a regular and permanent feature for whole decades. In Krasnoyarsk in the thirties, open-sided sheds were built on the bank, and in the cold Siberian winters the prisoners would shiver there for a day or two while they waited for transportation.

  [And V. I. Lenin in 1897 boarded the St. Nicholas in the passenger port like a free person.]

  The Yenisei prisoner- transport barges were permanently equipped with dark holds three decks deep. The only light was what filtered in through the companionway for the ship's ladder. The convoy lived in a little cabin on deck. Sentries kept watch over the exits from the hold and over the river to make sure that no one escaped by swimming. They didn't go down into the hold, no matter what groans and howls for help might come from there. And the prisoners were never taken up on deck for fresh air. In the prisoner transports of 1937 and 1938, and 1944 and 1945 (and we can guess it must have been the same in the interval), no medical assistance what- ever was provided in the hold. The prisoners lay there lined up in two rows, one with their heads toward the side of the barge and the heads of the other row at their feet. The only way to get to the latrine barrels was to walk over them. The latrine barrels were not always emptied in time (imagine lugging that barrel full of sewage up the steep ship's ladder to the deck). They overflowed, and the contents spilled along the deck and seeped down on those below. And people lay there. They were fed gruel from casks hauled along the deck. The servers were prison- ers too, and there, in the eternal darkness (today, perhaps, there is electricity), by the light of a portable "Bat" kerosene lamp, they ladled out the food. Such a prisoner transport to Dudinka sometimes took a month. (Nowadays, of course, they can do it in a week.) It sometimes happened that the trip dragged out much longer because of sand bars and other hazards of river travel, and they wouldn't have enough food with them, in which case they just stopped giving out the food for several days at a time. (And later on, of course, they never made up for the days they missed.)

  At this point the alert reader can without the author's help add that the thieves were on the upper level inside the hold and closer to the ship's ladder—in other words, to light and air. They had what access they required to the distribution of the bread ration, and if the trip in question was a hard one, they didn't hesitate to whip away the holy crutch (in other words, they took the gray cattle's rations from them). The thieves whiled away the long journey playing cards, and they made their own decks.

  [V. Shalamov tells about this in detail in his Ocherki prestupnogo mira (Sketches of the Criminal World).]

  They got the stakes for their card games by frisking the suckers, search- ing everyone lying in a particular section of the barge. For a certain length of time they won and lost and rewon and relost their loot, and then it floated up to the convoy. Yes, the reader has now guessed everything: the thieves had the convoy on the hook; the convoy either kept the stolen things for themselves or sold them at the wharves and brought the thieves something to eat in exchange.

  And what about resistance? It happened—but only rarely. One case has been preserved. In 1950 on such a barge as I have described, except that it was larger—a seagoing barge en route from Vladivostok to Sakhalin—seven unarmed 58's resisted the thieves (in this case bitches), who numbered about eighty in all (some with knives, as usual). These bitches had searched the whole transport back at Vladivostok transit point three-ten, and they had searched it very thoroughly, in no way less efficiently than the jailers; they knew all the hiding places, but no search can ever turn up everything. Aware of this, when they were al- ready in the hold they treacherously announced: "Whoever has money can buy makhorka." And Misha Grachev got out three rubles he had hidden in his quilted jacket. And the bitch Volodka Tatarin shouted at him: "You crowbait, why don't you pay your taxes?" And he rushed in to take it away. But Master Sergeant Pavel (whose last name has not been recorded) pushed him away. Volodka Tatarin aimed a slingshot—a "V" fork—at Pavel's eyes, and Pavel knocked him off his feet. Immediately twenty to thirty bitches moved in on him. And around Grachev and Pavel gathered Volodya Shpakov, a former army captain, Seryezha Potapov, Volodya Reunov, a former army sergeant, Volodya Tretyukin, another former sergeant, and Vasa Krav- tsov. And what happened? The whole thing ended after only a few blows had been exchanged. This may have been a matter of the age-old and very real cowardice of the thieves (always concealed behind feigned toughness and devil-may-care insolence); or else the proximity of the guard held them back (this being right beneath the hatchway). Or it may have been that on this trip they were saving themselves for a more important social task—to seize control of the Aleksandrovsk Transit Prison (the one Chekhov described) and a Sakhalin construction project (seizing control of it, of course, not in order to construct) before the honest thieves could; at any rate they pulled back, restricting themselves to the threat: "On dry land we'll make garbage out of you!" (The battle never took place, and no one made "garbage" out of the boys. And at the Aleksandrovsk transit point the bitches met with misfortune: it was already firmly held by the honest thieves.)

  In steamships to the Kolyma everything was the same as on the barges except that everything was on a larger scale. Strange as it seems, some of the prisoners sent to the Kolyma in several over- age old tubs on the famous expedition led by the ice-breaker Krasin in the spring of 1938 are still alive today. On the steamers Dzhurma, Kulu, Nevostroi, Dneprostroi, for which the Krasin was breaking the way through the spring ice, there were also three decks in the cold, dirty holds, and on these decks, in addi- tion, there were two-story bunks made out of poles. It was not completely dark: there were some kerosene lanterns and lamps. The prisoners were allowed up on deck in batches for fresh air and walks. Three to four thousand prisoners were in each steamer. The voyage took more than a week, and before it was over all the bread brought aboard in Vladivostok got moldy and the ration was reduced from twenty-one to fourteen ounces a day. They also gave out fish, and as for drinking water . . . Well, there's no reason to gloat here, because there were temporary difficulties with the water. Here, in contrast to the river transports, there were heavy seas, storms, seasickness. The exhausted, en- feebled people vomited, and didn't have the strength to get up out of their vomit, and all the floors were covered with the nauseating mess.

  There was one political incident on the voyage. The steamers had to pass through La Pérouse Strait, very close to the Japanese islands. And at that point the machine guns disappeared from the watchtowers and the convoy guards changed to civilian clothes, the hatches were battened down, and access to the decks was forbidden. According to the ships' papers, foresightedly prepared back in Vladivostok, they were transporting, God save us, not prisoners but volunteers for work in the Kolyma. A multitude of Japanese small craft and boats hovered about the ships without suspecting. (And on another occasion, in 1938, there was an incident involving the Dzhurma: The thieves aboard got out of the hold and into the storage room, plundered it, and set it afire. The ship was very close to Japan when this occurred. Smoke was pouring from it, and the Japanese offered help, but the cap- tain refused to accept it and even refused to open the hatches. When Japan had been left behind, the corpses of those suffocated by smoke were thrown overboard, and the half-burned, half- spoiled food aboard was sent on to camp as rations for the prisoners.)

  [Decades have passed since then, but how many times Soviet citizens have met with misfortune on the world's oceans—and in circumstances where it seems that zeks were not being transported—yet because of that same secretiveness disguised as national pride they have refused help! Let the sharks devour us, so long as we don't have to accept your helping hand! Secretiveness —that is our cancer.]

  Short of Magadan the ship caravan got caught in the ice and not even the Krasin could help (it was too early for navigation, but they had been in a hurry to deliver laborers). On May 2 they disembarked the prisoners on the ice, some distance from the shore. The newly arrived prisoners got a look at the cheerles
s panorama of the Magadan of that time: dead hillocks, neither trees, nor bushes, nor birds, just a few wooden houses and the two-story building of "Dalstroi." Nonetheless, continuing to play out the farce of correction, in other words, pretending they had brought not simply bones with which to pave the gold-bearing Kolyma but temporarily isolated Soviet citizens who would yet return to creative life, they were greeted by the Dalstroi orchestra. The orchestra played marches and waltzes, and the tormented, half-dead people strung along the ice in a gray line, dragging their Moscow belongings with them (and this enormous prisoner trans- port consisted almost entirely of politicals who had hardly en- countered a single thief yet) and carrying on their shoulders other half-dead people—arthritis sufferers or prisoners without legs. (And the legless, too, got prison terms.)

  But here I note that I am again beginning to repeat myself. And this will be boring to write, and boring to read, because the reader already knows everything that is going to happen ahead of time: The prisoners would be trucked hundreds of miles, and driven dozens of miles more on foot. And on arriving they would occupy new camp sites and immediately be sent out to work. And they would eat fish and flour, chased down with snow. And sleep in tents.

  Yes, it was like that. But first the authorities would put them up in Magadan, also in Arctic tents, and would commission them there too—in other words, examine them naked to determine their fitness for labor from the condition of their buttocks (and all of them would turn out to be fit). In addition, of course, they would be taken to a bath and in the bath vestibule they would be ordered to leave their leather coats, their Romanov sheepskin coats, their woolen sweaters, their suits of fine wool, their felt cloaks, their leather boots, their felt boots (for, after all, these were no illiterate peasants this time, but the Party elite—editors of newspapers, directors of trusts and factories, responsible offi- cials in the provincial Party committees, professors of political economy, and, by the beginning of the thirties, all of them under- stood what good merchandise was). "And who is going to guard them?" the newcomers asked skeptically. "Oh, come on now, who needs your things?" The bath personnel acted offended. "Go on in and don't worry." And they did go in. And the exit was through a different door, and after passing through it, they received black cotton breeches, field shirts, camp quilted jackets without pockets, and pigskin shoes. (Oh, this was no small thing! This was farewell to your former life—to your titles, your posi- tions, and your arrogance!) "Where are our things?" they cried. "Your things you left at home!" some chief or other bellowed at them. "In camp nothing belongs to you. Here in camp we have communism! Forward march, leader!"

  And if it was "communism," then what was there for them to object to? That is what they had dedicated their lives to.

  And there are also prisoner transports in carts and simply on foot. Do you remember in Tolstoi's Resurrection how on a sunny day they drove them on foot from the prison to the railroad sta- tion? Well, in Minusinsk in 194-, after the prisoners hadn't been taken into the fresh air for a whole year, they had forgotten how to walk, to breathe, to look at the light. And then they took them out, put them in formation, and drove them the fifteen miles to Abakan on foot. About a dozen of them died along the way. And no one is ever going to write a great novel about it, not even one chapter: if you live in a graveyard, you can't weep for everyone.

  A prisoner transport on foot—that was the grandfather of prisoner transport by rail, of the Stolypin car, and of the red cattle cars too. In our time it is used less and less, and only where mechanical transportation is still impossible. Thus in one sector of Lake Ladoga, the prisoners were sent on foot from besieged Leningrad to the red cars, nicknamed "red cows." They led the women together with the German POW's, and used bayonets to keep our men away from them so they couldn't take their bread. Those who fell by the wayside were immediately tossed up into a truck alive or dead, after their shoes were removed. And in the thirties, each day they sent off on foot from the Kotlas Transit Prison to Ust-Vym (about 185 miles) and sometimes to Chibyu (more than 300 miles) a transport of a hundred prisoners. Once in 1938 they sent off a women's prisoner transport the same way. These transports covered 15 miles a day. The convoy marched along with one or two dogs, and those who fell behind were urged on with gunstocks. True, the prisoners' possessions as well as the cooking pot and the food brought up the rear in carts, and this transport thus recalled the classic prisoner trans- ports of the past century. There were also prisoner-transport huts —the ruined houses of liquidated kulaks, with windows broken and doors ripped off. The accounting office of the Kotlas Transit Prison had issued provisions to the transport based on a theoreti- cal estimate of the time the journey would take, provided nothing went wrong on the way, without allowing for even one extra day. (The basic principle of all our accounting.) Whenever delays occurred en route, they had to stretch out the provisions, and fed the prisoners a mash of rye flour without salt and sometimes nothing at all. In this respect they departed from the classic model.

  In 1940 Olenyev's prisoner transport, after disembarking from the barge, was herded on foot through the taiga (from Knyazh- Pogost to Chibyu) without anything to eat at all. They drank swamp water and very quickly got dysentery. Some fell by the wayside out of weakness, and the dogs tore the clothes off those who had fallen. In Izhma they caught fish by using their trousers as nets and ate them alive. (And in a certain meadow they were told: Right here is where you are going to build a railroad from Kotlas to Vorkuta.)

  And in other areas of our European North, prisoner transports on foot were standard until the time when, on those same routes and roadbeds built by those earlier zeks, the jolly red cattle cars rolled along carrying later prisoners.

  A particular technique for prisoner transports on foot was worked out where such transports were frequent and abundant. When a transport is being taken through the taiga from Knyazh- Pogost to Veslyana, and suddenly some prisoner falls by the wayside and can go no farther, what is to be done with him? Just be reasonable and think about it: what? You aren't going to stop the whole transport. And you aren't going to leave one soldier behind for everyone who falls. There are many prisoners and only a few soldiers. And what does that mean? The soldier stays behind for a little while with the fallen prisoner and then hurries on to catch up with the rest—alone.

  Regular transports on foot from Karabas to Spassk were retained for a long time. It was only twenty to twenty-five miles, but it had to be covered in one day, with one thousand prisoners in each transport, many of them very weak. It was expected in cases like these that many would simply either drop in their tracks or else fall behind through the indifference and apathy of dying men—you may shoot at them but they still can't go on. They are not afraid of death, but what about clubs, the indefatigable beating of the clubs wherever they hit? They are afraid of clubs, and they will keep going. This is a tested method—that's how it works. And so in these cases the transport column is surrounded not only by the ordinary chain of machine gunners at a distance of fifty yards, but also by an inner chain of soldiers armed only with clubs. Those who have fallen behind get beaten. (As, in fact, Comrade Stalin prophesied.) They are beaten again and again. And even when they have no strength at all with which to go farther, they keep going. And many do miraculously get to the destination. They don't know that this is a testing by clubs, and that those who lie down and stay lying down and don't go on despite the clubs are picked up by carts following behind. That's organizational experience for you! (And one can ask: Why, then, didn't they take them all on carts in the first place? But where could enough carts be found? And horses? After all, we have tractors. What about the price of oats nowadays?) Such transports as these were still common in 1948-1950.

  And in the twenties, transport on foot was one of the basic methods. I was a small boy, but I remember very well how they drove them down the streets of Rostov-on-the-Don without any qualms. And the famous order: ". . . will open fire without warn- ing!" had a different ring at that ti
me, again because of a differ- ence in technology: after all, the convoy often had only sabers. They used to deliver orders like this: "One step out of line and the convoy guard will shoot and slash!" That had a very powerful sound: "shoot and slash!" You could imagine them cutting off your head from behind.

  Yes, and even in February, 1936, they drove on foot through Nizhni Novgorod a transport of long-bearded old men from the other side of the Volga, in their homespun coats and in real lapty —bast sandals—wrapped around with onuchi—Russian peasant footcloths—"Old Russia disappearing." And all of a sudden, right across their path, came three automobiles, in one of which rode the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee, President of the Soviet Union, this is to say, Kalinin. The prisoner transport halted. Kalinin went on through. He wasn't interested.

  Shut your eyes, reader. Do you hear the thundering of wheels? Those are the Stolypin cars rolling on and on. Those are the red cows rolling. Every minute of the day. And every day of the year. And you can hear the water gurgling—those are prisoners' barges moving on and on. And the motors of the Black Marias roar. They are arresting someone all the time, cramming him in some- where, moving him about. And what is that hum you hear? The overcrowded cells of the transit prisons. And that cry? The com- plaints of those who have been plundered, raped, beaten to within an inch of their lives.

  We have reviewed and considered all the methods of deliver- ing prisoners, and we have found that they are all ... worse. We have examined the transit prisons, but we have not found any that were good. And even the last human hope that there is some- thing better ahead, that it will be better in camp, is a false hope.