Work in Progress

This summary of the abridged Gulag Archipelago, which is 528 pages long, is a work in progress.

Jordan Peterson had made a general recommendation to read it, so I gave it a try. I've since listened to the audiobook twice and now I'm going through it for a third time writing this summary, as time permits.

The audiobook is narrated perfectly by Alexsandr's son Ignat.

Gulag is an excellent and vitally important book, which documents the horrors of Communism under Lenin and Stalin. A similar experience can be experienced in China today under Xi Jinping in the Xinjiang province.

Gulag demonstrates that the Russian Communists were masters at scapegoating which is to say, falsely accusing innocent people of invented crimes or fraudulently linking them to real crimes in order to justify abusing them.

The book begins with the story of gulag prisoners on Kolima, who discovered some frozen and perfectly preserved prehistoric fishes, which archeologists would have considered a great and important find. The gulag prisoners were starving however, so they cooked and ate the fish without a second thought.

Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn is also well-known for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which is somewhat more difficult to get through, despite being only 208 pages.

Foreward

Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn began writing and editing the Gulag Archipelago in 1958. It includes the experiences of 227 witnesses to the Gulag system.

Originally Dmitri Petrovich Vitkovsky was going to be the editor but could not because his Gulag experiences, described in his book Half a Lifetime, led to untimely paralysis.

Solzhenitsyn's book introduced the word gulag into the vernacular of the West.

The term GULAG is a Russian acronym, coming from Glavnoe Upravlenie ispravitel'notrudovykh LAGereĭ, meaning: chief administration of corrective labor camps.

In 1994 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia after 20 years of exile.

He asserted that Communism killed one third of the Russian population. The total number of politically-induced deaths by the Bolsheviks is between 35 and 60 million people.

His book served as an indictment of Communism and helped bring about its demise.

It was preceded by his book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which similarly exposed the atrocities of Communism, and may have helped bring about the fall of East Germany.

See also the Black Book of Communism.

Solzhenitsyn said the Gulag Archipelago is not a political exposé, it should not be viewed through a political lens, and that the book is rather about morality.

The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

Solzhenitsyn's reception in the West was dampened by his embrace of Christianity, which was out of vogue at the time among liberals.

The full book is 1800 pages long.

PART I

CHAPTER 1: Arrest

Arrest is the means by which you begin your journey to the Archipelago i.e. to the system of isolated prison camps throughout the Soviet Union.

Arrest hits you like a bolt of lightning. You ask Me? What for? but your question is not answered.

The state agency responsible for making these arrests changed over time. Early on, were was the OGPU (secret police) and later it was the NKVD.

The NKVD also performed mass extrajudicial executions.

Their operatives were generally called Chekists.

Arrests involved extensive searches of every part of an apartment, every crevice. In one anecdote, it even included the examination of a dead child awaiting burial.

Arrests were frequently done at night in order to shatter the peace of everyone living in the apartment complex and further instill fear on the population.

Victims were told to bring nothing because everything would be provided to them, but they learned later that virtually nothing would be provided even during winter.

The agencies required a civilian witness to each arrest.

Victims were told to leave with police quietly, meekly.

Victims were taken away in black marias i.e. black police vans.

When family members were told they had no right to correspondence this typically meant the person was shot.

The state agencies referred to themselves as the organs i.e. organs of the state.

The state agencies were sometimes creative in their arrest tactics. Arrests could performed anytime and everywhere, including arresting a person during their own surgery.

Each railway station had an OGPU branch office and prison cells, for people who were arrested while traveling.

The arresting agents were known for carrying a maroon card to identify themselves.

Foreigners were not immune. Alexander Dolgun worked at the US Embassy but he was arrested in broad daylight.

The organs of the state often chose people to arrest at random because they had arrest quotas to meet.

Solzhenitsyn gives the story of a woman who asked the secret police what to do about the infant of a woman who was just arrested. So they arrested her too, to help fill their quota.

Due to the quotas, people were even arrested en masse.

People always assumed their arrest was a mistake that would be corrected later. But once they were in the gulag system, that correction never came. S says the arrested had no hope.

Some people who were not arrested were beset with worry, because they expected arrest any day now and were relieved when it finally happened. This is another means by which the Soviets terrorized the population.

People didn't resist arrest and had many reasons why. One was the belief that making a fuss would make reversing the mistake impossible.

They had no idea how sinister and homicidal the Communists actually were.

Solzhenitsyn describes his own arrest. He was a soldier deployed in German territory near the Baltic and was asked to meet with his brigade commander. He gladly surrendered his pistol and was immediately set upon by two Chekists (secret police) and arrested.

He asked why he was being arrested. Unusually, his commander hinted at the reason: He had a certain childhood friend. The Chekas were very unhappy that he was told.

S later explains he had recently corresponded with that friend.

He was then housed in a small German peasant shack with four others, three of them having been found guilty of trying to rape a woman who was the property of the local Smersh chief counter-intelligence officer.

During this time it was common for Russian soldiers to rape and then shoot German women whom they happened upon.

Smersh is a name that derives from the expression death to spies.

Later, Solzhenitsyn was required to help Smersh bring some bags of war booty back from the German area. He blames himself for not crying out or escaping when he could.

CHAPTER 2: History of Our Sewage Disposal System

People fixate on the 1937 purges but in fact, there were many purges, some large and some small.

The most documented purge was the Great Purge or Great Terror from 1936 to 1938, in which educated people were targeted. About 1 million people died.

Because they were literate people, some who survived later wrote about their experiences making the events of 1937 especially well known.

• In 1918-1920 there were mass killings and rebellions.
• In 1929 to 1930, 15 million peasants were sent away into the taiga (northern forest lands) and tundra.
• There was the 1935 purge of Leningrad.
• In 1944-1946, entire nations and millions of people were removed.
• In 1948-1949 there was a purge in the Baltics.

The Red Terror of 1918 to 1922 led to the extermination of perhaps 200,000 people by the Cheka (secret police).

Martin Latsis, chief of the Ukrainian Cheka, wrote:

• We are not fighting against single individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.

In rural areas, peasants were forced to work for the state by the state taking hostages and when the peasants failed to work, the hostages were killed.

Russians returning from abroad were imprisoned.

Concentration camps were set up in 1921 for Tambov peasants due to a farmer uprising. That term was used by Lenin before it was used by the Nazis.

There were mass arrests.

The Kronstat sailors were imprisoned.

All non-Bolshevik parties were arrested.

Religious leaders were always getting arrested.

There were mass arrests of believers and some were exiled. Women were considered the strongest believers.

Whereas prostitutes were given only 3 year terms in the Solovetsky islands.

Religious prisoners were prohibited after the terms were served from returning to their home city or areas of origin.

In 1929 was the night of struggle against religion in Leningrad.

1929 also saw the gold wave, a round-up of anyone suspected or possessing gold, including dentists, jewelers, watch repairmen.

In 1930 the Kulaks (successful peasants) were subjected to forced resettlement of their entire families. They were sent into the inhospitable tundra en masse.

The snippers of corn ears i.e. people stealing corn in the night from collective farms, who were often children, were given 10 year sentences (tenners) in the gulags.

Article 58, section 10 of the penal code specified a minimum penalty but not a maximum term.

The story is related of an audience forced to clap in support of Stalin, which kept clapping on and on, because it was understood that the first to stop clapping would be punished. The man who did, a director of a paper factory, received a 10 year term.

The secret police were given a quota of arrests: In every city, village, district and military unit they had to arrest a certain quantity of people. This was the assignment of quotas.

The story is related of some gypsies who were arrested purely to fulfill the quota.

Students got professors sent to the gulags for insufficient support for the Bolsheviks or Stalin.

Shaking the wrong person's hand in the street could get you arrested.

In 1939, there was a reverse wave in which 1-2% of those arrested but not yet convicted were freed. But by implication everyone else in the gulags was guilty.

In 1939, 30,000 Czechs were sent to the camps.

In 1939, west Ukrainians and Belorussians were sent to the camps.

In 1940, an entire jazz orchestra was arrested at the Modern Cinema Theater.

All potential leaders of any form of resistance were purged: the wealthy, the independent minded.

Arrests occurred in Latvia and Lithuania. During WW2, just before the Red Army retreated from the invading Germans, they shot 192 local prisoners.

Owners of private radios were sent to the camps.

Germans living on the Volga, in Ukraine, and elsewere were ethnically cleansed by sending them into exile.

Isolated Russian military units were held on suspicion of being a threat to the state.

The victory in Moscow led to arrests of Russians who didn't flee the Germans, because this was deemed suspicious.

The Soviet criminal code specified the crime 58-10 Subverting Government Authority, which was commonly used.

When Russian prisoners of war returned from Sweden they were not incarcerated until they praised life in that free country. When Western journalists wrote about the incarceration of these PoWs, the prisoners were pulled out of prison and forced to pretend to be free and happy for the journalists.

Russian emigres were sent to the camps if they had any political ideas.

1945: Vlosof soldiers, Cossacks, Muslims, were sent to the camps. 1 million ordinary Russians who were fugitives living in the West were returned by Allies into Soviet hands (forced repatriation). The US sent tens of thousands.

Note: This is the subplot of the movie The Third Man, which stars Orson Wells, Joseph Cotton and Anna Schmidt.

The Law of Seven Eighths said that people got 10 years for stealing any small thing.

1947: The Four Sixths decree was passed:

• Stealing a few corn cobs got you 20 years.
• Stealing in a factory got you 25 years.
• Failure to report theft of state property got you 3 years in the camps. (7 years exile?)

S mentions the phenomenon of the Repeaters. These were people who survived the 10 years in the gulag starting in 1937. Stalin ordered their rearrest on no grounds whatsoever, which occurred in 1948-1949, and the arrest of their children.

1948-1950: Spies were sent to the camps including Americans (Anglo?). Students were sent to the camps. Some crimes (that students were arrested for?):

• The VAT charge meant praise of US technology.
• The VAD charge meant praise of US democracy.
• The PZ charge was toadyism toward the West. These got people 25 year terms, but just 10 years for juveniles.

Note: Webster's 1913 edition defines toadyism as: The practice of meanly fawning on another; base sycophancy; servile adulation.

1948: Greeks from the Sea of Azov (east of Crimea) were sent to the camps. These were the Kubaan and Sukhumi Greeks.

1949: Baltic people were exiled to Siberia.

1950: Jews began getting arrested, accused of being Cosmopolites. It seemed that Stalin planned to purge the Jews, but perhaps his doctor helped end his life at that point.

Note: Webster's 1913 edition defines cosmopolite as: One who has no fixed residence, or who is at home in every place; a citizen of the world.

Gebisty was a term for state security men.

CHAPTER 3: The Interrogation.

• S gives a list of horrible torture techniques used by the USSR.
• Types of torture initially mentioned include:
  • Prisoner has his/her head compressed with iron rings.
  • Prisoner lowered into acid bath.
  • Prisoner placed in pit to be bitten by ants or bedbugs.
  • Prisoner has hot poker inserted into his/her anus.
  • Male prisoner's genitals crushed slowly by compression with boot.
  • Prisoner prevented from sleeping for a week.
  • Prisoner prevented from drinking anything.
  • Prisoner beaten to a pulp.

• Even 30 years after the mass roundups, torture and long sentences in gulags, no one in the USSR could speak of it.
• Soviet society discouraged discussion of mass torture.
• It preferred that instead, the news focus was on socialism's material accomplishments, which had to be glorified.
• However, many Soviet advances happened only because of prison labor.
• S mocks the censorship and promotion of public works by asking, wasn't there an upside to the Spanish Inquisition? Or to serfdom?
• S compares Checkov's time to the Bolsheviks' era:
  • The Tsar's use of torture techniques was very rare.
  • Earlier under Catherine the Great, there was no torture.
  • Bolsheviks in contrast used extreme torture and very extensively, not against the few but against millions of people.
• Arrest possible if:
  • You're on a list.
  • There's an initial suspicion.
  • There was a denunciation by an informer.
  • There was an anonymous denunciation.
• After arrest, a formal charge is brought.
• The investigation wasn't used to investigate, but rather to wear down, exhaust, weaken the prisoner until they confess, to make him want him to end the suffering at any cost.
• Dahl's dictionary differentiates between the definition of inquiry and investigation: The former is used to justify the latter.
• The Organs (of the state) needed very little to justify an investigation.
• Intimidation was used during investigation e.g.
  • Revolver left on desk, pointing at the accused.
  • Prevention of sleep.
  • Multiple interrogations.
  • Nighttime interrogations.
  • Shining headlights at the prisoner.
  • Alternately heating and cool the cell.
  • Using heat to cook the prisoner until he or she bleeds.
  • Burning the skin of the prisoner with cigarettes.
  • Pushing the prisoner into a cesspool.
• The rule was, once charges had to be brought, the more likely was torture.
• The rule was, the more outlandish the charges, the more extreme the torture.
• Torture's purpose was to force a confession.
• If the person were really guilty, there'd be less need to torture them.
• Cases were often fabricated, therefore torture had to be used because none of the accused were guilty and therefore wouldn't confess.
• Cheka were not held back by any morality.
• The Cheka had a weekly publication: Red Sword and Red Terror.
• In this, there were people debating whether torture was ideologically correct from a Marxist perspective.
• 1938 onwards, torture and violence were used in order to meet quotas.
• Types of torture to be used were not regulated.
• In 1939, torture required permission in writing.
• Certain groups of people could automatically be tortured:
  • Nationalists, especially Ukranians & Lithuanians.
  • Conspirators in underground organizations.
• In 1937 Vashinsky said
  • There is no absolute truth only relative truth.
  • Trials could not establish absolute truth.
  • Therefore, proofs of guilt are relative and approximate i.e. Soviet jurisprudence was allowed to return to barbaring mediaval standards.
• The flexibility of the truth allowed the torture of millions of people.
• Stalin's decrees were carefully written to leave out the last word, which enabled him to claim innocence if anything messy happened. The Cheka were had to guess the last word and proceed with tortures.

• Techniques of torture in Soviet prisons were developed that would leave no marks on the body.
  1. Psychological tortures such as nighttime torture.
  2. Persuations e.g. just confess were used against Bolshevik prisoners.
  3. Cursing at priests etc.
  4. Good cop, bad cop; changes in tone by one interrogator.
  5. Humiliation e.g. nakedness, holding difficult positions.
  6. Inducing confusion in the prisoner.
  7. Intimidation, false promises, false threats.
  8. Lies about the laws.
  • The interrogators were free to lie, but the accused were not. Lies were also used to decieve family members of the accused. [Used by police in the USA?]
  • The Tsarist empire allow family members to refuse to testify and to later repudiate their testimony.
  • The Tsarist regime did not consider kinship to be evidence against anyone.
  9. Threats against family members. Pretending that a family member was also arrested when they weren't. Pretending that a family member has denounced the prisoner.
  10. Use of sound e.g. megaphone into the ear.
  11. Tickling.
  12. Burning on skin e.g. with cigarette.
  13. Light effects. Bright lights in the prison cell that is always on. Search lights shining into the eyes and damaging them.
  14. Leading the prisoner to interrogation but not interrogating them, over and over for hours to induce fear and exhaustion.
  15. Putting the prisoner into a small box without any communication.
  16. Forcing the prisoner to remain upright on a stool for hours or days, no sloughing or leaning on a wall.
  17. Putting the prisoner in a deep pit without bathroom breaks for days, with very little water or food. An outdoor pit without protection from the elements or cold or heat e.g. for a month.
  18. Forcing the prisoner to stand on their knees.
  19. Forcing the prisoner to either stand or sit for days. One day of standing enough to break the prisoner's will.
  20. Depriving the prisoner of water while standing.
  21. Sleepnessness:
  • Sleeplessness combined with psychological torture.
  • Sleeplessness forced while the prisoner sits on a soft sofa, e.g. by prodding them.
  • Sleeplessness was used because it was (A) cheap and (B) left no marks.
  • Sleeplessness was also accomplished by requiring that cots were folded up during the day, so if torture occurred at night the prisoner would be awake for days.
  22. Use of multiple shifts of interrogators to achieve continuous sleepless interrogation for days, both during the daytime and nighttime.
  23. Putting the prisoner into a bedbug (or lice) infested box or pit, removing their clothing to ensure they are bitten.
  24. Putting the prisoner into small punishment cells for days:
  1. The cell was too cold or hot
  2. The cell was damp or have some inches of icy water on the floor.
  3. Also not feeding the prisoner while in the punishment cell.
  25. Locking the prisoner in a tiny alcove with dripping water.
  26. Starvation, intensified by
  1. small rations
  2. taunting with food displayed nearby.
  3. starvation followed by alcohol was especially useful to force a confession.
  27. Beatings that left no marks e.g.
  1. using rubber mallets
  2. using sand bags
  3. Jackboot on shin.
  4. Beating the prisoner the moment that he falls asleep.
  5. Beatings upon bones and joints.
  6. Multiple days of beatings.
  7. Hitting the solar plexus.
  8. Hitting finger joints with ruler.
  9. Knocking out teeth.
  10. Penalty kick against the male genitals, leading to loss of consciousness.
  28. The Novaritsky NKVD invented a device for squeezing fingernails, causing many prisoners to lose their fingernails.
  29. Straightjacket.
  30. Breaking the prisoner's back.
  31. Bridling or swan dive: putting some towel between the jaws and connecting it to heels; no water and food for days.
• Nothing in the upbringing or education of the typical person prepares them for being arrested-for-nothing and put on trial for nothing.
• The Soviet criminal codes were not available to the public, so you cannot self-educate. There was no chance of getting a lawyer to defend you.
• Interrogation consists of being told you're guilty, so you must sign your confession, but you deny it, yet you are told you must sign. Various mysterious parts of the criminal code are cited but not explained, not available to be read from anyone. The accused is told they are not allowed to view the criminal code. It's for the Cheka to read, not the accused.
• S explains that Cheka would lie, saying the signature just means the accused has read the accusation, not agreed to it.
• UPK is the code of criminal procedure, versus UK which is the criminal code.
• S explains that neither in the gulag nor in exile was he ever able to locate the Soviet criminal code in order to read it, nor did 100's of other prisoners he knew.
• Only after the UK and UPK were out of date did S find copies of them for sale in public.
• The UPK article 136 states that the interrogator cannot use compulsion or threats to extract testimony or confession. Clearly this rule was not followed.
• Article 139 stated that the accused could write out his own testimony and to correct it. Clearly this rule was not followed.
• Newcomers to interrogation had no idea what the rules were nor that the official rules were not being followed.
• New prisoners were typically kept alone in solitary confinement until a false confession was extracted, to keep them in the dark about how interrogation worked and what the rules were.
• Interrogators misled the accused:
  1. They told him some material evidence proved his guilt.
  2. They told him his family testified against him.
  3. They told him they could pardon him when they couldn't.
  4. They exaggerated their power to destroy him and his loved ones.
  5. Their goal was to extract damning evidence about him and other people.
• Every prisoner made mistakes while being interrogated and regretted them.
• Article from The Guardian
• Even though charges were fabricated, the goal was still to maximize:
  • the number of pieces of evidence against the accused
  • the number of innocent people who could be implicated
• After all, the goal was to meet a quota.
• The accused were often so fatigued that they just wanted to sign the confession and not have its inane, false content read out.
• Some years when prisons were overcrowded (1937, 1945), solitary confinement of newcomers was not possible and they were put into crowded cells, sometimes extremely overcrowded cells, which was a torture unto itself.
• When prisoners were packed into small rooms, their collective body heat would cause the temperature to rise above 40 degrees C.
• Some overcrowded cells did not have floor space for everyone, and people sat on other individuals' feet.
• Toilet visits were reduced to once per day including at night.
• Prison floors were asphalt.
• In one case, at Butirky, the laundry room was used as a cell.
• S gives the example of a cell at Vladimir, 30 people in a 10x10 feet cell, without ventilation which caused overheating.
• A latrine bucket was in the overcrowded cells.
• Crowded cells were in some ways worse than solitary, because prisoners could see and hear the effects of torture on other prisoners.
• A torture used on a malnourished prisoner whose buttocks had withered away was to strike the sciatic nerve.
• Some additional tortures:
  • Jailors used a cheese grater to scrape off some of the prisoner's skin and then jailors would apply turpentine.
  • Forcing the prisoner to drink water to the breaking point.
  • Pushing needles under fingernails.
  • Hitting with a mallet on the scyatic nerve, which is intensely painful but leaves no marks.
  • Dragging a priest by their long hair, dragging a regular man by his beard.
  • Pressing with the toe of man's boot or women's shoe which slowly crushes the genitalia, while demanding confession.
• It wasn't just low-level interrogators who performed tortures but also ministers and deputies.
• In cells, the jailors planted stoolies (fake prisoners or turncoat prisoners) who implanted fear, uncertainty, doubt, paranoia, in prisoners' minds and gave bad advice.
• Prisoners were urged and threatened to identify their accomplices, especially by stoolies.
• One prisoner identified Cardinal Richeleu as his accomplice and no one saw the humor.
• Leading Bolsheviks were arrested, who then named names and this led to the mass incarceration and execution of Bolsheviks by Stalin.
• Being arrested by the NKVD is effectively being condemned to death. Sooner or later the prisoner realizes this.
• The interrogator relies on the prisoner not realizing this, having hope, and fighting every doubt, and fearing everything.
• It's the prisoner who has no fear and only cares about their god's judgment (not the state's) who is not politically useful.
• The interrogators themselves had never been tortured in the 52 ways, so they never built up any steadfastness or strength of character.
• Resisting interrogation (by Bolsheviks, by Nazis) is heroism.
• S gives examples of people who were released because interrogation of them was futile.

CHAPTER 4: The Bluecaps

• Bluecaps is another name for interrogators.
• Every prisoner remembers the tortures (s)he experienced in detail and remembers what information (s)he gave to the interrogators, but usually doesn't remember the interrogators' names.
• Prisoners also remember other prisoners.
• S describes Alexander II, who was the target of multiple assassination attempts. He went to a prison and demanded to experience solitary confinement for an hour to empathize with the prisoners, showing higher-level moral thinking.
• No Bolshevik would ever do this. They are not moral or logical or inclined toward higher-level thinking. They blindly followed orders.
• Interrogators knew accusations were fabricated but they continued producing depositions, year after year, without critical thinking or moral thinking.
• S believes the bluecaps were cynics who enjoyed the workings of the prison system.
• Interrogator Babich asserted that interrogation and trial are just formalities that don't change your fate, which was previously decided. If you were always going to be shot, you will be shot.
• (This coincides with the Marxist plan to exterminate the bourgeoisie.)
• Prisoners forget the names of their persecutors, but they recall the foul rot of the place and situation.
• Alexander II asked to be locked up in solitary cell 227 for an hour to try to understand what prisoners experienced.
• Jailers only had to follow orders and be insensitive to suffering.
• Credo of underworld thieves: You today, me tomorrow.
• S compares the USSR jailers to the Nazis, who just followed orders and didn't think.
• To not think is the ruin of a human being.
• Torture is euphemized as persuasion.
• S says the blue caps understood how the gulags worked and loved it.
• Blue caps' slogan was: Just give us a person and we'll create the case. (It's the same as attacks on Donald Trump's people.)
• Torture was good work because it brings about the confessions of the innocent.
• The goal was totals i.e. quotas of confessions, which led to a good life for the interrogators.
• High totals mean a good life, low totals mean expulsion.
• Stalin always believes there are enemies, so there was no mercy toward prisoners indeed there was rage against those who refused to confess.
• Not confessing was therefore thought to be an attack on the interrogator personally, to harm his standing.
• Young interrogators in prisons became intoxicated with power.
• Blue caps had a 3 year training at NKVD school.
• SMERSH in the military were likewise intoxicated with power. They were above all powerful military leaders.
• S compares the blue caps' presence to a tapeworm in a person's body.
• Blue caps were protected and backed up by the Organs i.e. secret police.
• Blue caps didn't have to worry about providing proofs.
• The blue caps were allowed to enjoy being cruel in interrogations and to try new interesting new techniques.
• Male interrogators were allowed to use their power to abuse women sexually and to force them into exploitative relationships.
• Blue caps could have any woman, any possession, any housing, and could destroy any human obstacle.
• Thus blue caps universally pursued personal gain.
• S says that 75% of arrests were motivated by the petty desire for personal gain.
• S recounts the story of the blue cap who stole his cigarette case. He says no Tsarist policeman would have treated a loyal soldier in this way.
• Night interrogations paid more than daytime ones, but interrogators lied about how many hours they worked.
• Blue caps took whatever objects they wanted, including during arrests. They were unrestrained.
• The folk saying is If you speak for the wolf, speak against him as well.
• S asks where did this wolf tribe come from?
• He says they come from Russian culture.
• He asks couldn't any one of us have become such an interrogator?
• S says he was offered to go to NKVD school. He knew at the time what the NKVD was up to, the depravity of it. He saw the black marias in the streets pursing arrests.
• As a 20 year old student, he was unconcerned about the few arrests he knew of. He and other students marched in the streets. He imagined a bright socialist future.
• The NKVD school would have offered a career with higher pay and better rations.
• S wonders what he would have become if he had gone to NKVD school. He isn't quite sure why he rejected it.
• In the end, S was arrested by SMERSH and stripped of his shoulder boards.
• He thinks it is impossible to separate humanity into good and evil groups.
• The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy of piece of his own heart?
• The line in one's heart between good and evil shifts over time, in one direction and then in the other, he says. He believes that line shifts toward good or evil at various points in a person's life.
• The mentions the proverb: From good to evil is one quaver.
• Know thyself. -Socrates
• S says it is random circumstances that lead to us being good and then evil.
• (When S wrote the Gulag Archipelago, the idea that psychopaths could have brains that are wired differently than normal people had not yet been conceived.)
• S describes how he felt repelled by the idea of joining the NKVD. It makes me feel sick.
• But he asks, if he had gone ahead with the NKVD training, what would he have become?
• S tells the anedote of the young Gebist who warned a priest to flee a month before an arrest was going to happen, but who didn't.
• S tells the story on how in 1946, Viera Karnyeva had to sign a nondisclosure agreement but wanted to read it first. Viera preached religion at the Gebiste in the MGB office. She asked, why does the state persecute the best people?
• Evildoers, as portrayed in children's books, recognize they are evil. But in real life, doing evil requires that a person first think it is justifiable and even good.
• Ideology provides justification for evil-doing, because it makes a person think he is doing good.
• Examples of the Inquisitors, conquerors, colonizers, Nazis, Jacobins.
• Without evil-doers they could have been no Archipelago.
• S presents the rumor that condemned prisoners were fed to the zoo animals.
• S argues that a fictional evil-doer could never do that, however a real person with ideology easily could.
• Humans move bad and forth between good and evil, but going beyond a certain degree of evil a person crosses a threshold and a return to goodness is unlikely.
• Comrades angrily refuse to talk about the millions killed during the purges, and say no one was to blame for it, but meanwhile in West Germany 86,000 Nazis were convicted by 1966 and that's important.
• S calculates that 250,000 Soviet mass murderers are still walking free in the USSR, never threatened by any court for their crimes.
• Example of Molotov.
• S asks, why can Germany punish its criminals but the USSR cannot?
• The Russian people let the Bolsheviks murder millions of people and then live a prosperous life, and then coddled those murderers in their later years.
• The USSR thus has nothing to teach the world.
• For the sake of Russia's future, S says, the Russians have the duty to seek out all of the killers and bring them to trial.
• Russians must condemn the idea that some people have the right to repress others.
• Keeping silent about evil will cause it to rise up 1000 fold in the future.
• The young are being taught that evil deeds are not punished and actually bring prosperity.

CHAPTER 5: First Cell, First Love

• The first cell that you are put in is a special one, because it's there that you orient yourself to your fate and realize you are not alone in it.
• S describes various first cells he heard of, such as one whose windows were smeared with red lead; or another next to an airplane engine testing site.
• You remember the first cell's fellow doomed inmates like they were your family.
• The first interrogation cell is also memorable.
• S describes the variety of cell experiences:
  1. Solitary versus crowded.
  2. Crowded cells versus not.
  3. Always lit (e.g. with 200 watt bulb) versus always dark. One lit with only red light because the windows were smeared with red lead.
  4. No bunks, dirty floor, asphalt floor.
  5. No washing, or the occasional hot shower.
  6. Tiny food ration. A meal for one shared by 12 people.
  7. Short stays versus long stays.
  8. No ventilation.
  9. Lice, bedbugs.
  10. Quiet versus very loud.
• S describes Sukhanovka, a former monastery dating to Catherine the Great's regime.
• Wikipedia: Sukhanovo Prison
• S describes a prisoner Alexander Delgun was the prisoner who measured the cell size while there; he was put in a standing-only cell, 5x6.5 feet and he found a way to sleep while standing. A guard prevented him from sitting. Sukhonovka was set up to prevent sleep and if you succeeded, you received a private cell.
• Newcomers were asked by fellow prisoners Are you from freedom?. If so, prisoners provided news of the outside world and events in the war.
• Nasyetka = stool pigeon.
• There had to be one per cell to listen to prisoners' discussions. Prisoners censored themselves due to the stool-pigeons.
• S says they were easy to spot but merely a nuisance but that these traitors caused prisoners to self-censor; this worked like a censor relay that shut down speech.
• Regulations said prisoners were not allowed to know anything about the outside world.
• S was in prison for 8 years, 3 in exile, 6 years of underground authorship: a total of 17 years, during which he probably reveal secrets to stool pigeons but never recklessly to cause any problem.
• As prisoners, news that is good to an outsider might not be good at all for them. S calls this a 180 degree turn.
• S describes a great sense of relief from being moved from the interrogation cell and threats by the interrogator of being murdered, to being in a shared cell, with shared stories, shared suffering, shared knowledge, and shared understanding (context, history, causation). This is the real meaning of the First Cell.
• Some prisoners had been prisoners before the Bolsheviks took over, and some had known the major players.
• Fastyenka, who was old and had known Lenin, told S to question everything, the maxim of Descartes.
• Springtime lifted the spirits of prisoners and the allotted 20 minute walks outdoors were essential for improving health.
• S describes Estonian prisoner Suzi and the difficult predicament of Estonia being caught between Teutons and Slavs, who alternately invaded.
• S describes how Estonians who saught self-determination were rounded up and put in a Soviet camp.
• S describes Yuri who spoke German and was sent on a spying mission and while returning to Russia was captured and put in a German concentration camp for 2 years, conditions of which reduced Russians to lice-infested beasts.
• Yuri was obliged to reach certain conclusions in light of better conditions that other nationalities experienced, receiving aid from the red cross and their governments. The USSR didn't aid Russian prisons in PoW camps.
• S asks whether a motherland that betrays its own soldiers is really a motherland.

POWs

• Of all the PoWs in the German camps, only the Soviet citizens live and died like this.
• Survival required facing up to this fact.
• Poles, Yugoslavs, etc. had it better.
• English and Norwegians received numerous parcels via neutral countries. Russians received none.
• S asks, if you mother throws you to the dogs, is she still your mother?
• S asks, is a motherland which betrays its soldiers still a motherland?
• Another prisoner who was fluent in German, Yuri, became a lieutenant in the German army. On his return he was captured and became a Soviet prisoner.
• On May 1st, the blackout shades were removed from windows as the war was coming to an end. S was in the Luyanka prison in Moscow.
• On May 2nd, S heard the 30 gun salute, meaning that some European capital had fallen. There were only two not yet captured: Berlin and Prague.
• On May 9th lunch and dinner were served at the same time, and there were 30 and 40 gun salutes. Prisoners deduced another capital had fallen. S saw fireworks and searchlights.
• But for the prisoners, it was moot. Even though many of them were soldiers, they knew the victories were not for them.

CHAPTER 6 That Spring

• S was in the Butyrka prisonin Moscow.
• Prisoners heard marches over and over and heard of a plan for a celebration in Red Square.
• The irony was, these soldiers who helped bring about the victory were stuck in prison accused of being traitors.
• That Spring of 1945, a flood of PoWs washed over the gulag system.
• There were smaller groups entering the gulag: Russian emigres, Russian workers abroad, and anyone who had contemplated or experienced freedom, who were therefore a threat to Stalin.
• To have survived the PoW camps in Europe meant you were suspect and disgraced.
• Returning PoWs were erroneously labeled traitors of the motherland, not traitors to the motherland.
• In truth, it was the motherland that betrayed the soldiers.
• S notes that of all the English PoWs, only one was labeled a traitor.
• It turns out, Article 58-1B allowed only for the execution of a Red Army soldier who surrendered.
• Therefore all PoWs returning to Russia were arrested, either at the border or at PFLs (identification and screening camps).
• The Soviet Union betrayed its soldiers in 3 ways:
  1. Through ineptitude which undermined the armed forces.
  2. By abandoning soldiers, allowing them to be captured.
  3. By coaxing soldiers (and emigres) to return to Russia e.g. with false claims of amnesty.
• S asks, how can we understand how the most just social system in the world could instantly have so many traitors?
• Marx told us of the suffering of the working class in England, yet England only found one traitor.
• Russian PoWs were arrested by as late as 1946 and 1947.
• Some Russian soldiers were transported back to Russia in train cars.
• If a Russian PoW had been liberated by the British or Americans, their punishment in Russia would be worse.
• Returning PoWs often had no idea they would be arrested and wished they had fled.
• Some did know, for instance the Vlasov men.
• S encountered them in prison. The Vlasov men referred to Russians who fought against the Red Army.
• The Germans accepted many nationalities' help during the war as Hilfswillige (voluntary helpers).
• These nations' soldiers fought for the Germans:
  • Lithuanians (mistreated badly by the USSR)
  • Estonians
  • The Ukrainian SS
  • Belorussians
  • Turkistan
  • Crimeans
  • Georgia
  • Armenians
  • North Caucuses
  • Kelmuk battalions
  • Kossaks
• Vlasov lent his name to the anti-Soviet liberation movement but S said they saw little action.
• Vlasov said Nazism wouldn't work in Russia but that the Nazis were needed to defeat the Bolsheviks.
• Russians worried that Germany wanted to turn Russia into a colony.
• Vlasov didn't know what form of government Russia ought to have.
• There was a window of opportunity then to block the Bolsheviks from gaining total control, if an independent Russian army could be raised. Hitler opposed it. He had the volunteers disarmed.
• There was no hope that the democratic British and Americans might help a non-Communist Russia.
• The West was only fighting Hitler, not against Communism.
• Soviet propaganda explained that the free Russians fighting the Soviets as treasonous cowards. S explains they certainly weren't cowards.
• S says the Red Army shot any Russian who fought against them.
• February 1945 saw the formation of the first ROA division and the second begun to be formed.
• It was too late for them to fight for the Germans.
• The first ROA division left the front line and saved Prague from the Germans.
• The hope was that the Allies would find them useful and not comply with Stalin's requirement to send all Russians back to Russia.
• The West did not understand that Bolshevism is a threat to all mankind.
• S suggests they did not even understand that anti-Bolshevik Russians existed.
• They only cared about their own freedom, not the Russians' freedom.
• The ROA surrended to the Americans, but the US decieved them, and extradited them to Russia.
• In Yalta, Churchill and FDR had signed an agreement to repatriate all Soviet citizens.
• The British turned over to Stalin 40-45k Kossaks who had reached Austria. The Kossaks had wanted to emigrate anywhere rather than go back to Russia. They were disarmed and later beaten by the British and all officers were arrested by the Red Army.
• Enlisted men were then to be repatriated by force in train cars covered with barbed wire. Priests who pleaded for the enlisted men and families were ignored. Some tried to flee and were shot by the British or jumped to their deaths from a bridge, rather than be sent back to certain death.
• The British also extradited Yugoslavs back to Yugaslavia, despite their having helped the British in 1941, to certain execution.
• The West remained faithful to Stalin and turned over Soviet citizens to him, many to be shot without trial.
• Russians were extradited from Europe as well as the USA to the USSR.
• S describes his unit having been ambushed by Vlasov soldiers, who were quite effective, just before he was arrested as a traitor.
• S stresses that there were 100,000 young Russian men fighting against Russia. S mentions the proverb: Well fed horses don't rampage.
• That Spring, Russian emigres were in the gulag.
• He says Russians abroad were continuing the development of Russian culture and philosophy, even if back in Russia these were suppressed or eliminated.
• Russians abroad often fought for the Left. In the USSR however, Russian emigres were paradoxically slandered by the regime as fascists.
• Stalin insisted all emigres abroad had to be imprisoned.
• Many emigres were duped by the USSR into returning, giving them honors and promising forgiveness, but when the arrived they were arrested, either right away typically or after a few years.
• 1948-1949 saw all emigres finally sent to camps.
• Affluent returning emigres even brought expensive possessions with them back to Russia, like cars and pianos. These were confiscated.
• Well-fed Soviet cultural leaders and officials falsified the reality of Russian emigres, whom they slandered as fascists.
• USSR representatives went to Shanghai to offer fake forgiveness to the Russians there, who returned by steam ships, then loaded into freight cars and were ultimately incarcerated.

CHAPTER 7: In the Engine Room

• Butyrka train station had a frisking box where people were searched, big enough for 20 zeks.
• S was processed there. The NKVD major told S that he was sentenced to 8 years. S insisted on reading the order. He was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda and trying to establish an anti-Soviet organization (nonsense accusations). S describes a very uneventful bureacratic experience.
• S describes a Hungarian who signed his sentence paper without knowing what it was, as there was no translator.
• The OSO (Ministry of State Security) performed these political prosecutions. It was not mentioned in the constitution or criminal code. They existed unto themselves.
• There is no court for nothing, for that there is the OSO.
  • ASA = anti-Soviet agitation
  • KRD = counter-revolutionary activity
  • KRTD = counter-revolutiojnary Trotskyite activity
  • PSH = suspicion of espionage
  • SVPSH = contacts leading to suspicion of espionage
  • KRM = counter-revolutionary thought crime
  • VAS = dissemination of anti-Soviet sentiments
  • SOE = socially dangerous element
  • SVE = socially harmful elemnt
  • PD = criminal activity
  • CHS = member of a family of someone convicted of above.
• OSO officially did not sentence people, they instead imposed an administrative penalty, therefore it was not a court sentence even if it was 25 years. They were not connected to the court system. You could not appeal their sentence.
• In January 1950 a decree reestablishing capital punishment, which had not been banned or prohibited, against subversives and diversionists.
• In 1958, the fundamental principles of criminal prosecution of the USSR was published in newspapers, which omitted the possibility of aquittal.
• S describes a military leader Cholpinyov who was falsely accused by a rival of praising German artillery etc. He wanted to face his slanderer and prove his patriotism but was prevented, the reason given was that the court's aim was to kill off chivalrous tendencies.

CHAPTER 8 The Law as a Child

• S says Russians remember not facts and events but instead repeated false narratives, which makes Russians easy prey for liars.
• People forgot the numerous public trials that began after the Bolshevik revolution.
• NOTE: This chapter reviews 5 such public trials.

CHAPTER 9: The Law Becomes a Man

• NOTE: This chapter describes 5 trials from the 1920's, when the law was still developing at an adolescent stage.
• It includes trials against church leaders leading to their execution and accelerated confiscation of church assets.

CHAPTER 10: The Law Matures

• NOTE: This chapter covers 3 more trials in 1920's-1930's against loyal Communists and engineers.
• Violations against Leninist legality commence in 1934.
• S says the stenographic record of trials was not accurate and this was discovered when an observer made a handwritten record and compared it to the official record.
• S calls these trials dramatic productions.
• Defendants confessed to crimes they could not have committed.
• S compares these trials to that of a Communist at a Nazi trial in Leipzig who was courageous, versus the Communists in the Soviet trials who were altogether weak.
• S speculates that the Communists in these trials were hyponotized or drugged.
• S explains that these Communists had never experienced the merclilous prison experience of the USSR and had only experienced Tsarist jails which were comparitively humanitarian.
• Bolsheviks under the Tsar never did long years of hard labor, never were put in dungeons.
• S explains how Bolshevik leaders in these trials only did very short stints in prison and were sent into exile, and never experience unjust interrogations.
• Whereas under Stalin, teenagers were given 5 year sentences.
• Even Trotsky never experienced harsh prison like in the USSR. (NOTE: He was in New York City when he was called back to Russia and funded by the New York bankers.)
• In short, the USSR was far harsher, far deadlier than the Tsar ever was.
• Trotsky, as chairman of the revolutionary military council, inflicted terror on Soviet citizens but he himself never experienced it.
• Bolsheviks orders other to be shot but wilted at the prospect of their own death.
• The two kinds of toughness are not connected.
• Some doomed Bolsheviks committed suicide rather than endure harsh interrogation and debasement in show trials.
• Stalin selected the weaker Bolsheviks to undergo the show trials. He knew their weaknesses.
• Arthur Koestler wrote the Moscow show trials and Stalin's liquidation of the old Bolsheviks.
• Nikolai I. Bukharin wrote the Soviet constitution and was eliminated by Stalin, executed by firing squad.

CHAPTER 11: The Supreme Measure

• Execution under Tsar Alexis Romanov was allowed for 50 different crimes.
• Peter the Great allowed execution for 200 crimes.
• Elizabeth promised to not execute anyone and kept it for her 20 year reign but did allow flogging with a knout (whip), branding, exile, etc.
• Catherine the Great used capital punishment for political cases, but not for non-political.
• Execution was not used for 50 years until the 5 Decemberists. (They sought to end serfdom and attempted a revolt in 1825 after the death of Tsar Alexander I.)
• Until 1905, execution was rare, about 17 per year for 30 years prior, according to N. S. Tagansev.
• 1905-1908, executions jumped to 45 per month. An epidemic of executions said Tagansev.
• The provisional government abolished execution but in 1917 it returned for military crimes.
• 1918-1919 saw 1000/month shot, which shocked Russia.
• Both sides in the post-October civil war committed the war crime of sinking barges filled with large numbers of enemy prisoners and hostages.
• S describes the killing of 6 peasants who merely collected some hay for their cows, contrasts that moral crime with the outrage voiced by Communists in Russia, China, etc., at any criticism of Stalin.
• S says Stalin was merely a criminal. Those legal bodies that might have stopped his killings were absolished by him.
• 1937-1938 executions included 500,000 polical prisoners and 480,000 habitual thieves (blotnya), according to NKVD men who were sent to the gulags.
• They were Nikolai Yezhov and those associated with him. His people had performed mass arrests and executions during the Great Purge. (Wiki link)
• 1937-1938 in the main GPU building, they shot 200 people every night.
• In 1947, the capital offense was abolished and replaced by a 25 year term i.e. the quarter.
• S sarcastically says the public was ungrateful of such generosity.
• In 1950, executions were re-legalized for traitors, spies and subversives/diversionists, but kept the 25 year sentence.
• Pretexts for execution were then expanded in 1954, 1961, 1962 to include other offenses.
• 1000's and hundreds of thousands were shot.
• S recommends reviewing the photos of the executed.
• S describes on some former prisoners (zeks) have a ritual in which on March 5th, which is the death-day of Stalin, they display photos of dead prisoners and others come to review them.
• S lists the names of executed prisoners whose photos he possesses.
• S laments that the condemned hardly offer any resistance.

CHAPTER 12: Tyurzak

• This is a shortened term meaning prison confinement.
• S explains that even in 1917 it was realized that in the new society, some people had no role to play and prison was the only place for them.
• He explains that the Solovetsky Islands were a convenient place for prisons, because communication is impossible for half the year.
• Hunger strikes became a poor tactic for prisoners because their use assumes that the jailor has a conscience or can be shamed.
• Under the Tsar, the hunger strikers was successful, as were prisoners who destroyed prison property or refused to work.
• In the 1930's, the USSR abolished hunger strikes.
• Prisoners found they had to fast for up to 20 days just to receive a Red Cross parcel.
• Some hunger strikers simply died.
• Jailors' tactics:
  • Waiting for the prisoner to stop.
  • Deception to make the prisoner stop.
  • Forced feeding.
  • Deeming the strike to be counter-revolutionary and therefore punishable with a new prison term.
• In 1937, jailors were officially no longer responsible for deaths via hunger strike.
• Hunger strikes were effectively put to an end.
• TON = special purpose prison.
• Some categories and types of prisoners were put in special prisons so that they did not mix with the general prison population.
  • Convicted Gibiste
  • Socialists
  • Foreignors
  • Camp rebels
  • Ringleaders of thieves
  • Feeble prisoners
  • The USSR modified the Tsarist prisons:
  • They cut down any trees.
  • Fenced in courtyards.
  • Windows were muzzled e.g. covered e.g. with grid, and glass was frosted, resulting in insufficient light for reading.
  • Gardens destroyed.
  • Grass paved with asphalt.
• Prison meals in before 1931 included meat.
• Food quality delined in 1931-1932.
• Scurvy became a problem.
• At night, jailors would keep bright lights on, preventing sleep.
• Kerosene lamps would be used that used up oxygen.
• Prisoners who took their short walk outdoors were told to look at the feet.
• S compares the conditins at several special purpose prisons.
• In 1937, visits of relatives were banned.
• Prisoners could receive letters periodically including small amounts of money, which they could spend in the Commissary.
• Violent searches were common, including strip searches.
• Any excuse was enough to put a prisoner in a punishment cells, including coughing and pacing around in a cell.
• If any graffiti was found in the bathroom, everyone went into the cells.
• Time in a punishment cell was officially required for every prisoner, hence the trivialness of infractions that led to being put in one.
• Unruliness in a punishment cell results in adding 20 days to your time in the cell. Example of unruliness: pacing back and forth in the frigid winter.

PART II

CHAPTER 1: The Ships of the Archipelago

• 1000's of gulags exist and comprise the archipelago, but are invisible.
• People need to be transported between them.
• There are transit prisons to that S calls ports.
• Railroad wagons just for prisoners S refers to as Zak (pronounced zok) cars but are generally called Stolypin wagons.
• Red cattle cars were also used.
• S suggests that while these cars are named after Stolypin before 1911, they should really be called Stalin cars because their used increased in the 1920's/1930's.
• At the station, prisoners are transported in black marias.
• Black marias back up to the prisoner wagon so that the back doors align with the prisoner wagon's doors.
• Stolypin cars have no marking but you see diagonal gratings on windows, guards around them, and you may see soldiers inside them as prisoners.
• The stations where prisoners were moved were also normal civilian stations. The trains to which the Stolypin cars were attached were also a normal civilian trains.
• S explains where people can sit in the compartments of these cars. Some are forced to stand for days.
• Up to 25 people could be in a compartment for a week, moving across the USSR.
• In some cases up to 36 people were forced in and people died en route, who were removed.
• S gives the example of a train compartment with thirty old women, most of whom required hospitalization after arriving in exile.
• Reasons for women being jailed or exiled included being religious and dating a foreigner.
• Punishment cells were also used on trains, but they were better than the shared compartment.
• Food on trains was minimal e.g. half of a herring, a piece of bread. No water between stations. No hot meals were allowed. The train's kitchen was for the workers.
• Jailors would drop dried fish on the floor for prisoners to grab up.
• Some days there was no food on the train.
• Convoy staff were limited and not well fed themselves.
• Handing out water was a time consuming process; prisoners didn't have their own mugs so it went slowly.
• Prisoners wanted the healthy ones to drink first, so that people don't catch diseases from the unhealthy ones via the shared mugs.
• Toilet trips were also time consuming.
• Guards therefore were hesitant to give either food or water to prisoners, to reduce the time and effort required to maintain them.
• S provides the story of the 1-legged German who was forced to jump to and from the toilet.
• Toilets had no door and had no water for self-cleaning. The guard watched prisoners do their business and pressured them to speed up.
• If a prisoner soiled himself in the compartment, he had to pick it up and carry it away.
• Compartments sometimes had thieves added to the political prisoners.
• S sarcastically describes the convoy staff's behavior as quite rational.
• S says that any valuable possessions will be stolen in a fight on the train with thieves and you will face humiliation. Therefore, own very little and you will be happy. [To paraphrase the World Economic Forum.] Own nothing.
• Prisons are the natural environment of the thieves (blatnye).
• S says the prophets and philosophers always recommended owning nothing, that possessions stain the soul. Use your memory as your travel bag.
• Thieves take your things, surely in order to achieve your moral error. They'll lose your things in card games within a day.
• S becomes poetic, refers to people as thin strands of human life. Worth reading...

CHAPTER 2: The Ports of the Archipelago

• S says most prisoners have been in 3-5 gulags. The sons of the archipelago can name 50.
• The prisoners came to know the country by visits to the various gulags.
• Every city had a transit prison because each had a court.
• S describes the transit prison at Kortlos, which was made of very little, initially just fences, eventually there were tarpaulin-covered wooden structures, later tents. Even during the winter, this was all they had. 50 prisoners died per day.
• Kinyash-Pagost transit prison consisted of shacks built on a swamp covered in tarpaulin. At night the water under them froze.
• Food there consisted of a mash of crushed fish bones and grits.
• S explains that some camps did not have latrine buckets, or too small ones that were removed.
• S complains that some cells were filled 20 times their normal capacity.
• S asserts some wise prisoners knew to urinate in their boots.
• S says the worst situation in when zeks urinated in the communal food bowl and did not wash it. He asks where this would ruin
• S describes the story of the Swede Erik Underson, a foreignor who spoke Swedish, German and English fluently, the son of a billionaire. He was pro-socialist and came to Moscow as part of a military delegation and was wined-and-dined.
• At the time 1947-1948 the USSR was interested in finding young Westerners who would renounce capitalism.
• Erik wrote some pro-USSR articles and had a girlfriend in East Germany, despite having a wife, and there he was kidnapped and brought to Moscow.
• He was asked to renounced capitalism and his father but he refused. He kept him captive for roughly 2 years hoping to reeducate him but that failed, so he was sent to a gulag for 20 years.
• He rejected socialism and became indignantly pro-West.
• Erik invited S and friend to Stockholm some day and soon Erik was taken away.
• S asserts that Erik believed blindly in the West in the way that communist prisoners believe in the USSR.
• In the Usman prison, women prisoners were forced to undress and present themselves to Gulag bigwigs, who were selecting bedmates.

CHAPTER 3: The Slave Caravan

• The Stolypin cars, the black marias were hard to endure. Luckily in some cases prisoners were sent directly to the camps. Prisoners were transported to prisons in red cattle cars, barges, and were even forced to walk in groups to the prisons.
• Red cattle cars were used to send millions of peasants into exile in 1929-1930.
• Leningrad was emptied of its occupants using these red trainloads.
• The Volga Germans were exiled to Kazakhstan in these cattle cars.
• The Russians from Germany, Czechoslavakia and Russian cities, and the 58's were sent in red trains to the camps.
• Stolypins' trips had to be signed off on, but the red cattle car trains did not require sign-offs.
• Red cattle cars were also used to transport coal and lime. These were not swept before prisoners were put in them.
• Preparation of the car for prisoners consisted of
  • adding bars to windows
  • a hole in the floor for a drain
  • testing of walls, floors, ceilings for strength.
  • roofs had to be accessible, etc.
  • kitchens for prisoners and for guards had to be added.
  • wooden mallets had to be obtained for guards.
• Any features for guards' activities had to be added e.g. electricity for searchlights had to be reliable.
• Loading of the trains could be large operations, involving 1000 people getting onto 25 trains.
• Yevgenia Ginsberg wrote The 7th Car about these cattle cars.
• The convoy wanted to
  1. conceal the loading from citizens;
  2. terrorize the prisoners.
• Soviet people were all aware of the round-ups.
• Loading of the cars happened at night, and yet family often learned of the state's kidnappings of their loved ones, and came to the station looking for them.
• The convoy guards responded by surrounding the trains with guard dogs.
• Searchlights were used to terrorize prisoners.
• Yelling by guards, barking of dogs were used to break the will of prisoners so that they didn't take advantage of the relatively insecure environment and escape.
• The convoy also performed strip-search and frisking to confiscate all cutting devices, strings, straps, powders.
• Personal possessions are thrown into barrels. The various guards took what they wanted from those barrels.
• Red trains were deadly for many prisoners and often arrived with cars full of dead prisoners.
• In the winter, there were no stoves on the trains. In the summer, there was no cooling.

To be continued...

Other notes

• Lenin used the term concentration camp before Hitler did and Lenin even set up concentration camps outside Moscow to hold families of peasants.
• Lenin died in 1924, leading to a power struggle. Stalin finally gained control in 1928.
• In 1934 there were calls to remove Stalin e.g. by Trotsky.
• On August 20nd, 1940, an NKVD assassin attacked Trotsky in Mexico with an ice pick to the head; he died the next day.

Videos

• Yuri Bezmenov on subversion 1983

Links

• The Gulag Archipelago in 3 volumes (1800 pages)
• NY Times 1973 article by Solzhenitsyn
• Internal Workings of the Soviet Union article
• The Riddle of Moscow's Trials
• KGB in Kremlin Politics (UCLA/Rand)