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

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

He believed blindly in the West. He did not want to recognize its weaknesses. He considered Western armies unbeatable and Western political leaders faultless. He refused to believe us when we told him that during the period of his imprisonment Stalin had begun a blockade of Berlin and had gotten away with it perfectly well. Erik’s milky neck and creamy cheeks blushed with indignation whenever we ridiculed Churchill and Roosevelt. And he was also certain that the West would not countenance his, Erik’s, imprisonment; that on the basis of information from the Kuibyshev Transit Prison the Western intelligence services would immediately learn that Erik had not drowned in the Spree River but had been imprisoned in the Soviet Union—and either he would be ransomed or someone would be exchanged for him. (This faith of his in the individual importance of his own fate among other prisoners’ fates was reminiscent of our own well-intentioned orthodox Soviet Communists.) Notwithstanding our heated arguments, he invited my friend and me to Stockholm whenever we could come. (“Everyone knows us there,” he said with a tired smile. “My father virtually maintains the Swedish King’s whole court.”) For the time being, however, the son of the billionaire had nothing to dry himself with, and I presented him with an extra tattered towel as a gift. And soon they took him away on a prisoner transport.7