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

The Trusties I 261
istry of Internal Affairs and the overall system of repression?3
And is not evefything bad that goes on in the Archipelago or
on the' entire earth ... accomplished through us? Yet we attacked
Ivan Denisovich-for laying bricks? More of our bricks are there .
than )lis!
In camp they more often expressed the contrary insults and
reproaches: that the trusties rode on the sloggers' backs, devoured
their food, survived at their expense. These charges were made
against the compound trusties in particular, frequently not without
grounds. Who Short-weighed Ivan Denisovich's bread? Who
stole his sugar by dampening it with water? Who kept fats,meat,
or good cereals from the common pot?
e~ohT camp compound trusties on. whom food and clothing
depended were chosen on a special basis. To get those pbsitions
impudence, slyness, bribery were required; to hold such jobs
ruthlessness and a deaf ear to conscience were required (and, in
most cases, to be a stool pigeon as well). Of course, all generaliza-
• tions overstate their case; and from my own recollections I can
undertake to name opposite examples of uncorrupted, honest
compound trusties-but they didn't laSt long in their posts. As far
as the bulk of well-fixed camp compound trusties are concerned,
however, one can say without fear of being wrong that on the
average more depravity and malice were concentrated among
them than in the average native population. It was not a matter
of ,chance that these were the very jobs the camp bo!$Ses gave to
their former cronies-imprisoned former Security people. When
the MVD chief of Shakhty District was imprisoned, he wasn't
sent to cut timber but popped up as work assigner at the headquarters
camp of Usollag. And when MVD man Boris Guganava
was imprisoned ("Because I once took a cross off a church, I
have never since known any happiness in life"), he would be the
manager of the camp kitchen at ReShoty Station. But another
3. And this problem goes beyond the bounds of the Archipelago. Its. scale
is that of our whole society. Have not all our educated strata-technologists
and those trained in the humanities-been for all these decades precisely the
, same kind of links in the magic chain, the same kind of "trusties"? Can any­
. one point out to us scholars or composers or cultural historians among even
the most honest of those who have survived safe, sound, and whole and who
flourish, who, ·have sacrificed themselves to establish a common life in disregard
qf their own? .
262 I THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
seemu"gly quite different breed latched on to this group too. The
Russian interrogator from Krasnodon who under the Germans
had conducted the case against the Young Guard· partisans 4
was an honored work assigner in'one of the divisions of Ozerlag.
Sasha Sidorenko, a former intelligence agent who had fallen into
German. hands right off, and who had gone to· work for them
right off, was now storeroom manager in Kengir and loved getting
back at the Germans there for his own fate. Hardly had they gone
to sleep after roll call, tired from the day's work, than he would
come to them pretending to be drunk and raise a heart-rending
cry: "Germans! Achtung! I'm ... your God! Sing to me!" (And
the frightened Germans, rising up on their bunks half asleep,
began to sing "Lilli Marlene" for him. And what kind of people
were those bookkeepers who released Loshchilin 5 from camp in
late. autumn wearing just his shirt? Or that shoemaker in Burepolom
who, without even a twinge of remorse, took Ans Bemshtein's
new army boots in return for a bread ration?
When they got together on their porch for a friendly smoke
and a chat about camp affairs, it was hard to picture just who
among them might be different. .
True, they, too, have something to say in justification of
themselves. For example, I. F. Lipai wrote a passionate letter:
The prisoner's ration was outrageously and pitilessly plundered on
all sides. The thievery of the trusties for their Own sake ... was petty
thievery. While those' trusties who engaged in larger-scale thievery
were forced [1] into it. The Administration officials, both free workers
and prisoners, particularly during wartime, squeezed the paw of the
division,. officials, and the division officials did the same to the camp
officials, and the latter did the· same to the storeroom and kitchen
personnel-and all at the expense of the zek's ration. The most fearful
sh~ks of all were not the trusties but the nonprisoner chiefs (Kuragin,
Pois~-Shapka, Ignatchenko from SevDvinlag). They did not just
steal but "removed" from the storerooms, and not just by the pound,
but in sacks and barrels. And again it wasn't only for themselvesthey
had to divvy up. And the trusties had somehow to cover all this
up and forge the records. And anyone who refused to do it was not·
, 4. The genuine content of this case, it seems. was vastly different from even
the first version of Fadeyev. But we will not put our faith solely in camp
rumors.
S. For his surprising-or too -ordinary--:-fate, see below, Part IV. Chapter 4.