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

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It began to grow dark. It was August. The oily station gravel hadn’t yet completely cooled off from the sun and warmed us where we sat. We couldn’t see the station, but it was very close by, somewhere behind the trains. A phonograph blared dance music, and the crowd buzzed in unison. And for some reason it didn’t seem humiliating to sit on the ground in a crowded dirty mass in some kind of pen; and it wasn’t a mockery to hear the dances of young strangers, dances we would never dance; to picture someone on the station platform meeting someone or seeing someone off—maybe even with flowers. It was twenty minutes of near-freedom: the twilight deepened, the first stars began to shine, there were red and green lights along the tracks, and the music kept playing. Life was going on without us—and we didn’t even mind any more. Cherish such moments, and prison will become easier to bear. Otherwise you will explode from rage.