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

The trUsties I 283
ings, and what he wanted to know was whether he had put the
reinforcing rods in the right places. ) In the severe December cold
the brigadiers and the foremen had gathered in the office one
day to warm themselves and recount assorted camp gossip. Orachevsky
came in, took off a mitten, and triumphantly and with
great care emptied from it onto the desk an unmoving but still
living orange and black beauty of a butterfly. "Now that's a
butterfly for you-to survive a frost like that at five below! She
was sitting on one of the rafters."
Everyone gathered around the butterfly and all fell silent.
Those of us who proved fortunate enough to survive would be
unlikely to end our terms with any more liveliness in them than
that butterfly.
Orachevsky had been given only fiye years. He had been imprisoned
for a facial crime (really out of Orwell)-for'a smile!
He had been an instructor in a field engineers' school. While
showing another teacher in the classroom something in Pravda,
he had smiled! The other teacher W!lS killed soon after, so DO
one ever found out what Orachevsky had been smiling at. But
, the smile had been observed, and the fact of smiling at the central
organ of the Party was in itself sacrilege! Then Orachevsky
was invited, to make a political report. He replied that he would
carry out the order but he would be making the report without
enthusiasm. This had filled the cup to overflowing!
Now which of the two-Pravdin or Orachevsky-was the
closer to being an intellectual?
And there is no getting around speaking of Prokhorov here.
He was a portly peasant, heavy-footed, with a heavy stare, and
not much friendliness in his face, for he only smiled after thinking
something through. In the Archipelago men like that are
called "gray wolf." He had no inclination to make any concessions
of his own or to do good to anyone. But what I liked about
him right off was this: In bringing Zinovyev his. mess tins and
Belyayev his bread Prokhorov'was not servile, with a false smile
or even an empty word. Somehow he delivered these things majestically
and with reserve, showing thereby that service was
service but that he was no mere boy. To feed his big worker's
body he had to have a lot· to eat For the sake of ,the general's
gruel and grits he. was willing to suffer his humiliating position
284 TH"E GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
in silence; knowing that they despised him there, he did Dot answer
them rudely, but neither did he gC) running off in a flurry of
haste for them "on tiptoe."8 He could see through all.of us, every
last one of us he could see through, as if we were naked, but
the occasion never did arise for him to speak his mind. I felt
" about Prokhorov that he" was founded on bedrock, that much
in our people rests on shoulders like his; He was in DO hurry
to smile at anyone; his gaze was sullen; but he never snapped at
anyone's heels either.
He had not been imprisoned under Article 58, but he understood
the facts of ~e from beginning to 'end. For many years
he had been the chairman of a village soviet near Naro-Fominsk.
In that kind of job one also had to know how to twist and turn,
and be cruel, and stand one's ground ~gainst the higher-ups.
Here is how he described his work as chairman: "
"To be a patriot means always ~o be out in the lead. And it is
obvious that you are going to be the first to run into all kinds
of trouble. You make a report to the village soviet, and even
though village talk for the most part comes "down to 11IIJteriai
things, nonetheless same long-bem:d lets fly: 'What's permanent ,
revolution?' The devil take it; whatever it is, I kI\ow that city
women wear permanents, and if you don't answer him, they'D
say: 'You've stuck your pig's snout where it doesn't belong.'
And so I say that it is a kind of revolution that twists and turns
and can't be held in the hand-go to the city and look at the
women's curls, or on a sheep. And when our people started cursfug
tJut MacDonald, I corrected the authorities in my report:
'And you, comrades,' I said, 'would do better to step less on other
dogs' tails!' "
Over the years he had become familiar with all the window
dressing of our life, and had himself participated. He" sUJDJDoned
the collective faim chairman ane day and said: "Get one milk- .
maid ready for a gold medal at the agricultural fair-with a daily
milking record of sixty liters!" And in the whole collective they
collaborated to tum out such a milkmaid, they filled her cow's
manger with high-protein feeds and even sugar. And the whole
village and. the whole collective farm knew what that agricultural
fair was worth. But up above they were playacting, kidding themselves--which
means this was what they wanted.
When the front approached Naro-Fominsk, Prokhorov was
8. This expression "on tiptoe"-"na tsyr1akb"-is explained in Chapter 19,