Why, you may wonder, will a zek put up with ten years of backbreaking work in a camp? Why not say no and dawdle through the day? The night’s his own. It can’t be done, though. The work gang was invented to take care of that. It isn’t like a work gang outside, where Ivan Ivanovich and Pyotr Petrovich each gets a wage of his own. In the camps things are arranged so that the zek is kept up to the mark not by his bosses but by the others in his gang. Either everybody gets a bonus or else they all die together. Am I supposed to starve because a louse like you won’t work? Come on, you rotten
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