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

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The head of the District Consumer Cooperatives, Vasily Grigoryevich Vlasov, a man with a ragtag, haphazard education but one of those native talents others are so surprised to find among Russians, a born retail trade executive, eloquent, adroit in an argument, who could get fired to red heat about anything he believed to be right, tried to persuade the Party meeting to expel Romanov from the Party for slander. And they actually did give Romanov an official Party rebuke! Romanov’s last words in this dispute were typical of this kind of person, demonstrating his assurance in regard to the general situation: “Even though they proved Stavrov was not a Trotskyite, nonetheless I am sure he is a Trotskyite. The Party will investigate, and it will also investigate the rebuke to me.” And the Party did investigate: the District NKVD arrested Stavrov almost immediately, and one month later they also arrested Univer, the Chairman of the District Executive Committee and an Estonian.