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

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

At the Novosibirsk Transit Prison in 1945 they greeted the prisoners with a roll call based on cases. “So and so! Article 58-la, twenty-five years.” The chief of the convoy guard was curious: “What did you get it for?” “For nothing at all.” “You’re lying. The sentence for nothing at all is ten years.”