The Gulag Archipelago

'The Gulag Archipelago' is a work par excellence by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russia), the Nobel laureate in literature (1970). It sheds light on forced labour camp treatment at Gulag (acronym in Russian which means 'Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps') by soviet. He begins by the way how people were arrested in mass and on what basis/allegations. The book is obviously based on history and writer's personal experience there in prison. I'd like to share some excerpts from the translated version by Thomas P. Whitney, which I have been currently reading.

That's what arrest is: it's a blinding flash and a blow which shifts the present instantly into the past and the impossible into omnipotent actuality.

..... to imprison many  more  citizens  of  a  given  town  than  the  police  force  itself numbers.

"No  right to  correspondence"-and  that  almost  for  certain  means:  "Has been  shot.”

They  take  you from  a  military  hospital  with  a  temperature  of  102.

You  are  arrested  by a  religious  pilgrim  whom  you  have  put  up  for  the  night  "for  the sake  of  Christ."  You  are  arrested  by  a  meterman  who  has  come to  read  your  electric  meter.  You  are  arrested  by  a  bicyclist  who has  run  into  you  on  the  street,  by  a  railway  conductor,  a  taxi driver,  a  savings  bank  teller,  the  manager  of  a  movie  theater.  Any one  of  them  can  arrest  you,  and  you  notice  the  concealed  marooncolored  identification  card  only  when  it  is  too  late.

In  the  strained  and  overloaded years  of  1945  and  1946,  when  trainload  after  trainload  poured in  from  Europe,  to  be  swallowed  up  immediately  and  sent  off  to Gulag,  all  that  excessive  theatricality  went  out  the  window,  and the  whole  theory  suffered  greatly.  All  the  fuss  and  feathers  of ritual  went  flying  in  every  direction,  and  the  arrest  of  tens  of thousands  took  on  the  appearance  of  a  squalid  roll  call:  they stood  there  with  lists,  read  off  the  names  of  those  on  one  train, loaded  them  onto  another,  and  that  was  the  whole  arrest.

And  even  in  the  fever  of epidemic  arrests,  when  people  leaving  for  work  said  farewell  to their  families  every  day,  because  they  could  not  be  certain  they would  return  at  night.

"Every honest man is sure to go to prison. Right now my papa is serving time, and when I grow up they'll put me in too." (They put him in when he was twenty-three years old.)

A  person  who  is  not  inwardly  prepared  for  the use  of  violence  against  him  is  always  weaker  than  the  person committing  the  violence.

All  three  had  been officers.  Their  shoulder  boards  also  had  been  viciously  tom  off, and  in  some  places  the  cotton  batting  stuck  out.  On  their  stained field  shirts  light  patches  indicated  where  decorations  had  been removed,  and  there  were  dark  and  red  scars  on  their  faces  and arms,  the  results  of  wounds  and  bums.

However,  in  memory  they  get  all  mixed  up  together  because  they  are  so  similar:  in  the  illiteracy  of  their  convoys,  in their  inept  roll  calls  based  on  case  files;  the  long  waiting  under the  beating  sun  or  autumn  drizzle;  the  still  longer  body  searches that  involve  undressing  completely;  their  haircuts  with  unsanitary clippers;  their  cold,  slippery  baths;  their  foul-smelling  toilets; their  damp  and  moldy  corridors;  their  perpetually  crowded, nearly  always  dark,  wet  cells;  the  warmth  of  human  flesh  flanking you  on  the  floor  or  on  the  board  bunks;  the  bumpy  ridges  of  bunk heads  knocked  together  from  boards;  the  wet,  almost  liquid, bread;  the  gruel  cooked  from  what  seems  to  be  silage.

They  didn't  distribute  rations  to  individuals  but  to  units of  ten.  If  one  of  the  ten  died,  the  others  shoved  his  corpse  under the  bunks  and  kept  it  there  until  it  started  to  stink.

Half  a  mug  of water  a  day;  there  wasn't  any  more.