The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

And sleep was the very best thing for hunger and anguish. One’s organism cooled off, and the brain stopped recapitulating one’s mistakes over and over again. Then they brought in dinner—another ladle of gruel. Life was setting all its gifts before you. After that, you were not going to get anything to eat in the five or six hours before bedtime, but that was not so terrible; it was easy to get used to not eating in the evenings. That has long been known in military medicine. And in reserve regiments they don’t have anything to eat in the evening.