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

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The prison doctor was the interrogator’s and executioner’s right-hand man. The beaten prisoner would come to on the floor only to hear the doctor’s voice: “You can continue, the pulse is normal.” After a prisoner’s five days and nights in a punishment cell the doctor inspects the frozen, naked body and says: “You can continue.” If a prisoner is beaten to death, he signs the death certificate: “Cirrhosis of the liver” or “Coronary occlusion.” He gets an urgent call to a dying prisoner in a cell and he takes his time. And whoever behaves differently is not kept on in the prison.17