More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Whereas we knew before that Shukhov was in prison camp because he had signed a document which asserted that he was a German spy (he had been captured by the Germans but had escaped), we now learn the brutally simple reason for his “confession”: he had been beaten senseless by Soviet counterintelligence officers, and signing was the only way to save his life.
Other details restored in the canonical text include the information that Baptists were sentenced to twenty-five years for their faith alone, and that the same type of punishment could be expected for even the briefest association with foreigners (Senka Klevshin’s crime, for example, consisted of being liberated from Buchenwald by Americans).
Work, he reckoned, was the best medicine of all.
(Western Ukrainians never learn. Even in the camps they speak to people politely.)
“But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God.”
Your foreman matters more than anything else in a prison camp: a good one gives you a new lease of life, a bad one can land you six feet under.
If you can do two things with your hands, you’ll soon pick up another ten.
Some people with nothing better to do run races in stadiums of their own free will. Silly devils should try running for their lives, bent double after a day’s work.
“According to you, then, the moon really is new every month?” “What’s so strange about that? People are born every day, why shouldn’t a moon be born every four weeks?”
If you’re warm yourself, you don’t know what it’s like freezing.
Who is the convict’s worst enemy? Another convict. If zeks didn’t squabble among themselves, the bosses would have no power over them.
The good thing about hard-labor camps is that you have all the freedom in the world to sound off. In Ust-Izhma you’d only have to whisper that people couldn’t buy matches outside and they’d clap another ten on you. Here you could shout anything you liked from a top bunk and the stoolies wouldn’t report it, because the security officer couldn’t care less.
“Because, Alyoshka, prayers are like petitions—either they don’t get through at all, or else it’s ‘complaint rejected.’”
