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

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

And how comfortable it all is for the judges in a closed session! Judicial robes are not required and one can even roll up one’s sleeves. How easy it is to work! There are no public-address systems, no newspapermen, and no public. (Well, there is a public, an audience, but it consists of interrogators. For example, they used to attend the Leningrad Province Court during the day to find out how their “protégés” were conducting themselves, and at night went calling on those prisoners who needed to have their consciences appealed to.)3