The Gulag Archipelago

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Stupidity always follows on the heels of smugness.

Autocracy.

Innumerable are the examples of senseless orders, the sole purpose of which was to demonstrate their power.

A sense of possessing a patrimonial estate was typical of all camp chiefs.

Greed and money-grubbing

In their greed to grab as much as possible, none of their multitudinous legitimate monetary advantages and privileges could satisfy them.

Lasciviousness.

Malice, cruelty.

Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.

This similarity, alas, demonstrates that the nature of our compatriots has not changed in the slightest in two hundred years; give as much power as that and there will be all the same vices!)

An oaken cruelty is etched into their faces, and they always have a gloomy, dissatisfied expression. It would seem as if everything was going well in their lives, but there is that expression of dissatisfaction. Perhaps they have the feeling that they are missing out on something better? Or perhaps God has marked them out infallibly for all their evildoings?

Their blackness of heart stands out on their faces!

This limitation on thievery deeply affronted the jailers, especially their wives, and because of this there was much bitterness against the chiefs, because of this life seemed very unjust, and within the jailer’s breast there stirred not so much sensitive heart strings as a sense of unfulfillment, an emptiness echoing a human groan.

In any case, among both prison and camp jailers it was possible to find human beings. Every prisoner encountered more than one in his career. In an officer it was virtually impossible.

This, properly speaking, was the universal law of the inverse ratio between social position and humaneness.

Self-gu...

As always in the half-century of our most recent modern history, a lofty, bright theory and creeping moral vileness somehow got naturally interwoven, and were easily transformed into one another.

Everything of the most infectious nature in the Archipelago—in human relations, morals, views, and language—in compliance with the universal law of osmosis in plant and animal tissue, seeped first into this transmission zone and then dispersed through the entire country.

Thus it is that the Archipelago takes its vengeance on the Soviet Union for its creation. Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.

“We did this earlier. We are doing it now. And we are going to go on doing it in the future. It is profitable to society. It is useful to the criminals.”

the government evidently had no doubt of the economic profitability of the camps. Economics went before justice.

Did the camps justify themselves in a political and social sense? Did they justify themselves economically? Did they pay for themselves (despite the apparent similarity of the second and third questions, there is a difference)?

It is not difficult to answer the first question: For Stalin’s purposes the camps were a wonderful place into which he could herd millions as a form of intimidation. And so it appears that they justified themselves politically.

And all these parasites upheld the Archipelago with all their strength—as a nest of serf exploitation. They feared a universal amnesty like the plague.

The recruitment into camps obviously and clearly exceeded political needs, exceeded the needs of terror.

From 1930 on, it was not that the digging of canals was invented for dozing camps, but that camps were urgently scraped together for the envisioned canals.

It was not the number of genuine “criminals” (or even “doubtful persons”) which determined the intensity of the courts’ activities—but the requisitions of the economic establishment.

And so the state had to maintain at least one custodian for each working native (and every custodian had a family!).

Due to all these causes not only does the Archipelago not pay its own way, but the nation has to pay dearly for the additional satisfaction of having it.

In the mass and from a distance they seem like swarming lice, but they are the crown of creation, right? After all, once upon a time a weak little spark of God was breathed into them too—is it not true? So what has become of it now?

But it did not happen! People died by the hundreds of thousands and millions, driven, it would seem, to the extremity of extremities—but for some reason there were no suicides! Condemned to a misshapen existence, to waste away from starvation, to exhaustion from labor—they did not put an end to themselves!

And thinking the whole thing over, I found that proof to be the stronger. A suicide is always a bankrupt, always a human being in a blind alley, a human being who has gambled his life and lost and is without the will to continue the struggle. If these millions of helpless and pitiful vermin still did not put an end to themselves—this meant some kind of invincible feeling was alive inside them. Some very powerful idea. This was their feeling of universal innocence. It was the sense of an ordeal of the entire people—like the Tatar yoke.

But then the words swell up with their full meaning, and an awesome vow takes shape: to survive at any price.

This is the great fork of camp life. From this point the roads go to the right and to the left. One of them will rise and the other will descend. If you go to the right—you lose your life, and if you go to the left—you lose your conscience.

One’s own order to oneself, “Survive!,” is the natural splash of a living person.

But simply “to survive” does not yet mean “at any price.” “At any price” means: at the price of someone else.

At that great fork in the camp road, at that great divider of souls, it was not the majority of the prisoners that turned to the right. Alas, not the majority. But fortunately neither was it just a few. There are many of them—human beings—who made this choice. But they did not shout about themselves. You had to look closely to see them. Dozens of times this same choice had arisen before them too, but they always knew, and knew their own stand.

These transformations always proceed in the direction of deepening the soul.

“Darkness renders a person more sensitive to light;

“Here all the trivia and fuss have decreased…. I have experienced a turning point…. Here you harken to that voice deep inside you, which amid the surfeit and vanity used to be stifled by the roar from outside.”

While they openly claim your labor and your body, to the point of exhaustion and even death, the camp keepers do not encroach at all on your thoughts. They do not try to screw down your brains and to fasten them in place. And this results in a sensation of freedom of much greater magnitude than the freedom of one’s feet to run along on the level.

And there is one more freedom: No one can deprive you of your family and property—you have already been deprived of them. What does not exist—not even God can take away. And this is a basic freedom.

The result is what counts!!!

Here in slow annual spirals we have been climbing up to an understanding of life—and from this height it can all be seen so clearly: It is not the result that counts! It is not the result—but the spirit! Not what—but how. Not what has been attained—but at what price.

And so it is with us the prisoners—if it is the result which counts, then it is also true that one must survive at any price. And what that means is: One must become a stool pigeon, betray one’s comrades. And thereby get oneself set up comfortably. And perhaps even get time off sentence. In the light of the Infallible Teaching there is, evidently, nothing reprehensible in this. After all, if one does that, then the result will be in our favor, and the result is what counts.

It is pleasant to win. But not at the price of losing one’s...

If it is the essence that counts, then the time has come to reconcile yourself to general work. To tatters. To torn skin on the hands. To a piece of bread which is smaller and worse. And perhaps … to death.

And that is when—when you have ceased to be afraid of threats and are not chasing after rewards—you become the most dangerous character in the owl-like view of the bosses. Because … what hold do they have on you?

And as soon as you have renounced that aim of “surviving at any price,” and gone where the calm and simple people go—then imprisonment begins to transform your former character in an astonishing way. ...

Formerly you never forgave anyone. You judged people without mercy. And you praised people with equal lack of moderation. And now an understanding mildness has become the basis of your uncategorical judgments. You have come to realize your own weakness—and you can therefore understand the weakness of others. And be astonished at another’s strength. And wish to possess it yourself.