The Gulag Archipelago Vol. 2 An Experiment in Literary Investigation - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Way of Life and Customs of the Natives I 201
chinsk had. a norm of 118 pounds of ore to mine and load each
day. -(One hundred and eighteen pounds! One could lift that all
at once!) Whereas Shalamov on the Kolyma had a work norm
per day of 28,800 pounds. And Shalamov writes that in addition
their sUmmer workday was sometimes sixteen hours long! I don't
know how it was with sixteen, but for many it was thirteen hours
IQng-on earth-moving work in Karlag imd at the northern logging
operations-and these were hours on the job itself, over and
above the three miles' walk to the forest and three back. And
anyway, w.by should we argue about the length of the day? After
all, the work norm was senior in rank to the length of the workday,
and when the brigade didn't fulfill the norm, the only thing that
was changed at the end of the shift was the convoy, and the work
sloggers were left in the woods by the light of searchlights until
os~thgindim that they got back to the camp just.~efore morning
in time to eat their dinner along with their breakfast and. go out
into the woods again. 2 -
. There is no one to tell about it either. They all died.
And then here's anpther way they raised the norms and proved
it was possible to fulfill them: In cold lower than 60 degrees below
·zero, workdays were written off; in other words, on such days the
records showed that the workers had not gone out to work; but
they chased them out anyway, and whatever they squeezed out of
them on those days was added 10 the other days, thereby raising
the percentages. (And the servile Medical Section wrote off those
who froze to death on such cold days on some other basis. ~d
the ones who were left who could no longer walk and. were strain­
. ing every sinew to crawl along on all fours on the way back to
camp, the convoy simply shot, so that they wouldn't escape before
they could come back to get them.)
And how did they feed them.in return? They poured water into
a pot, and the best one might expect was that they woul~ drop
unscrubbed small potatoes into it, -but otherwise black cabbage,
beet tops, all kinds of trash. Or else vetch or bran, they didn't
2. Those who 1ncrease work norms in industry can still deceive themselves
into thinking that such are the successes of the technology of production. But
those who increase the norms of physical labor are executioners par excellencel
They cannot seriously believe thst under socialism the human being is twice as
big and twice aa muscular. They are the ones •.• who should be triedl1bey
are the ones who should be sent out to fulfill those work norms!
202 I 'THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
begrudge these. (And wherever there was a water shortage, as
there was at the Samarka Camp 'near Karaganda, only one bowl
of gruel was cooked a day, and they also gave out a ration of
two cups of turbid salty water.) Everything any good was always
and without fail stolen for the chiefs (see Chapter 9), for the
trusties, and for the thieves-the cooks were all terrorized, and
it was only by submissiveness that they kept their jobs. Certain
amounts of fat, and meat "subproducts" (in other words, not real
food) were signed out from the warehouses, as were fish, peas,
and cereals. But not much of that ever found its way into the
mouth of the pot. And in remote places the chiefs even took all
the salt for themselves for their own pickling. (In 1940, on the
Kotlas-Vorkuta Railroad, both the bread and the gruel were unsalted.)
The worse the food, the more of it they gave the zeks.
They used to give them horse meat from exhausted horses driven
to death at work, and, even though it was quite impossible to
chew it, it was a feast. Ivan Dobryak recalls today: "In my own
time I have pushed no small amount of dolphin meat into my
mouth, also walrus, seal, sea bear, and all kinds of other sea
animal trash. [I interrupt: we ate whale meat in Moscow, at the
Kaluga Gates.] I was not even afraid of animaI feces. And as for
willow herbs, lichens, wild camomile".-they were the very best of
dishes." (This means he himself went out and added to his rations.)
,
It was impossible to try to keep nourished on Gulag norms
anyone who worked out in the bitter cold for thirteen or evel\ ten
hoUrs. And it was completely impossible once the basic ration had
been plundered. And this was where Frenkel's satanic mixing
paddle was put into the boiling pot: some sloggers would be fed
at the expense of others. The pots were divvied up; if less than
30 percent of the norm (and in each different camp this was
calculated in a different way) was fulfilled, the ration,issued you
was a punishment block ration: 10V2 ounces of bread and a bowl
of gruel a day; for from 30 to 80 percent of norm they issued a
penalty ration of 14 ounces of bread a day and two bowls of
gruel; for from 81 to 100 percent you got a work ration of from
17Y.l to 21 ounces of bread and three bowls of gruel; and after
that came the shock workers' pots, and they differed among themselves,
running from 24Y.l to 31 Y.l ounces of bread a day and
supplementary kasha portions-two portions-and the bonus