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

The Trusties
I 2SS
plicably transforms him back into an ape again). And that is why
it is not at ~l out of vengeance but only in the faint hope of
correcting the 58's that it is strictly stated in the Gulag regulations
(and this regulation is continually being renewed) that persons
condemned under Article 58 cannot occupy any privileged positions
either in the camp compound or at work. (The only prisoners
able to occupy positions having to do with material values
are ones who out ~ freedom have already· distinguished themselves
by stealing.) And. that is how it would have been-for,
after all, the camp chiefs hardly harbored any love for the· 58's.
But they did know: that there were not even one-fifth as many
specialists under all the other articles combined all under 58. The
physicians and engineers. were almost entirely 58's. And you'd
not find better workers or more straightforwardly honest people
even among the free employees. And so in covert opposition to
the: One-and-Only Scientific Theory, the employers began surreptitiously
assigning 58's to trusty positions. Meanwhile the most
lucrative ones always remained in the hands of the nonpolitical
. offenders, with whom the chiefs found it easier. to make dealsand
too much honesty would have even been a hindrance. So they
used to put the 58's in trusty positions, bilt with each renewal of
this regulation (and it kept being renewed), and before the arrival
of any verification commission (and they kept arriving), a wave
of the chiefs white hand would send off the 58's to general work
without hesitation or regrets. Temporary well-being painstakingly
built up over months was shattered to bits in one fell day. But
this expulsion was not so ruinous in itself as were the eternal
rumors .of its approach, which ground down and wore out the
political trusties. These rumors poisoned the trusty's whole existence.
Only the nonpolitical offenders could enjoy their trusty
situation serenely. (However, the commission would come and
go, the work would quietly fall apart again, and the engineers
would once again be quietly hauled ii1 to fill trusty positions, only
to be driven out when the next commission was due.)
And other than the plain, ordinary 58's, there were also those
whose prison files had been branded with a separate curse from
Moscow: ''To be used only on general work!" Many of the
Kolyma prisoners in 1938 carried this brand. And for them to
get work: as a laundress or a drier of felt boots was an unattainable
dream.
256 I THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
How does the Communist Manifesto go? "The bourgeoisie has
stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked
up to with reverent awe.-C-A certain resemblance here!) "It has
converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man
of science, into its paid wage laborers."l* Well, at least they
were paid! And at least they were left to work in their own "field
of professional specialization"! And what if they had been sent
out to general work? To logging? And unpaid! And unfed! True,
physicians were sent out on general work only rarely: aIter all,
they were called upon to cure the chiefs' families as well. But as
for lawyers} priests, poets, and men of science-they were only
fit to rot doing general work. There was no place for them among
the trusties.
The brigadiers occupied a special position in the camp. In camp
terms they were not considered trusties,~ but you couldn't call them
sloggers either. Therefore the arguments advanced in this chapter
apply to them as well. .
•
Just as in battle, so in camp life there is po time for discussion;
a position as trusty becomes available-so you grab it.
But years and decades have passed. We have survived and our
comrades have perished. To astounded free people and our indifferent
heirs we are beginning to disclose bit by bit the world
of then and there, which had almost nothing human in it-and
we must evaluate it in the light of the human conscience.
And one of the principal moral questions here concerns the
trusties.
In choosing the hero of my story about the camps I chose a
slogger, and I could not have chosen anyone else, for only he
could perceive the true interrelationships of camp life. (Just as it
is only the infantryman who can weigh a whole war in the balance,
though for some reason it is not he who writes the war memoirs.)
This choice-of a hero and certain sharp remarks in my story perplexed
and offen4ed some former trusties-and, as I have already
said, nine-tenths of the survivors are indeed trusties. Thereupon
I. Marx and Engels, Sobrannye Sochineniya (Collected Works), 1928 edition,
Vol. lV, p. 427.