It wasn’t because they had extraordinary powers, really, but because of how well they used the ordinary powers everyone had: the power of courage, the power of kindness, the powers of curiosity and knowledge.
“Every crime is the result of a given social system, and in these terms criminal convictions under the laws of a capitalist society and in Tsarist times do not, in our eyes, constitute a fact branding a person with an indelible mark once and for all. . . . We know of many examples of persons in our ranks branded by such facts in the past, but we have never drawn the conclusion that it was necessary to remove such a person from our milieu. A person who knows our principles cannot fear that the existence of previous criminal convictions in his record will jeopardize his being included in the ranks of the revolutionaries.”
― The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
― The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
“No matter what the individual qualities [of the defendant], only one method of evaluating him is to be applied: evaluation from the point of view of class expediency”
― The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
― The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
“They were vehement in their rear-line wrath (the most intense patriotism always flourishes in the rear), and they added a good deal more in mother oaths.”
― The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
― The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
“a tribunal was not a court at all: “A tribunal is an organ of the class struggle of the workers directed against their enemies” and must act “from the point of view of the interests of the revolution . . . having in mind the most desirable results for the masses of workers and peasants.”26”
― The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
― The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
“Incidentally, it is very naive to say What for? At no time have governments been moralists. They never imprisoned people and executed them for having done something. They imprisoned and executed them to keep them from doing something. They imprisoned all those POW’s, of course, not for treason to the Motherland, because it was absolutely clear even to a fool that only the Vlasov men could be accused of treason. They imprisoned all of them to keep them from telling their fellow villagers about Europe. What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve for.”
― The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
― The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
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