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

The Trusties I 277
On the whole our room was a model room. The 'MVD man
and the general ran us. We could make use of the hot plate only
with their permission (it was a people's hot plate) when they
were not using it themselves. They Qlone decided whether the
room should be ventilated or not, where to put our shoes, where
to l)ang trousers, when to stop talking, when to go to sleep, when
to wake up. Several steps down the corridor was the door to the
big barracks room where a republic led its stormy life, where
they kept sending all authorities "up the mouth," "up the nose,"
etc. But here we had privileges,. and in clinging to them, we also
had to observe all the legalities. Having been booted into the
insignificant painters' brigade I had no say: I had become a
proletarian and at any moment they might cast me out into the
common barracks. The peasant Prokhorov, even though he was
considered the "brigadier" of the work trusties, had b~n appointed
to that position chiefly to act as servant-to carry bread
and mess tins, to communicate with the jailers and the barracks
orderlies, in a word to perform all the dirty work (it was this
very same peasant" who had 1ed the two generals). * And so it
. w~ that we were compelled to submit to our dictators. But where
was the great Russian intelligentsia and what was it looking at?
,Dr. Pravdin* (and I did not invent the name either) was a
neuropathologist and the camp physician. He was seventy. This
meant that the Revolution had arrived when he was already in
his forties, that he had come to full maturity during the best
period of Russian thought, in the spirit of conscientiousness,
honor, and reverence for the common people. And what· an appearance!
An enormous venerable head with silvery flopping
gray hair which the camp clippers did not dare to touch (a special
privilege from the chief of the Medical Section). His portrait
would have embellished the finest medical journal in the world!
Any country would have been honored to have such a minister
of health! His big nose, which knew its own value, inspired total
confidence in his diagnoses. His movements were all dignified.
He was so capacious' a doctor that he hardly fitted on a single
. metal cot and hung over the sides.
I don't know how good a neuropathologist he was. It is quite
possible he could have been a good one, but only in a mellow,
well-mannered epoch, and most certainly not in a government
hospital, but at his own house, behind his brass nameplate on an
,oaken door, to the melodic chiming of a grandfather. clock against
278 I THB GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
the wall, and not subordinate to anything except his. own conscience.
However, he had been thoroughly frightened since then
-frightened enough to last the rest of his life. I don't know
whether he had ever been imprisoned before, whether perhaps
he had been hauled out to be shot during the Civil War (this
would not have been surprising). But even without a revolver
at his head he had been frightened enough. It was enough to
have had to work in outpatient departments where they had demanded
he see nine patients an hour. where there was only
enough time- to tap for a knee jerk with a rubber ma~et; and to
have been a member of an Experts' Commission on Workmen's
Disabilities (VTEK), and a lJ!,ember of a Health Resort Commission.
and a member of a military conscription board, with
papers everywhere to sign, sign. sign. and to know that your
head was at stake with every signature, that some doctors had al­
!eady been arrested, others threatened, and you still had to keep
signing medical certificates, and diagnoses and expert testimony,
and medical attestations and histories· of illnesses, and every
single signature involved a Hamlet-like soul-searching as to
whether a given patient should be freed from work or not,
\Vhether he was suitable for service or not, whether he was sick
or healthy. Sick people implored you in one direction and the
bosses pulled you in the other, and the frightened dO~Qr would·
lose his presence of mind. become a prey to doubt and trepidation,
and then remorse ..
But all that was out in freedom. those were sweet-nothings!
In here, arrested as an enemy of the people, so terr..ified by the
interrogator that he was ready to die of a heart attack (I can
imagine how many people. a whole medical institute. no doubt,
he may have dragged there with him in such a state of terror!)
-what was he now? An ordinary scheduled visit of the free
chief of the Medical Section of the camp, an old toper with no
medical education, put Pravdin into such a c,?ndition of nervousness
and total confusion that he was quite incapable of reading
the Russian texts on the hospital cards. His doubts now multiplied
by ten. In camp he was simply in such a state he didn't
know whether a prisoner could be freed from work with a temperature
of 99.86 degrees or not. \V.hat if they dressed him down?
And he would come to our room. to get our advice. He could
maintain a calm equilibrium no longer than a day at .a time--