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

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It was rare, of course, to spend hours in a Black Maria; twenty to thirty minutes were more likely. But you got flung around, it was a bone-breaker, it crushed all your insides during those half-hours, your head stooped if you were tall, and you remembered the cozy Stolypin with longing. And the Black Maria means one thing further—it is a reshuffling of the deck, new encounters, and among them those which stand out most clearly are, of course, your encounters with the thieves. You may never happen to be in the same compartment with them, and maybe they won’t put you in the same cell with them even at the transit prison, but here in the Black Maria you are in their hands.