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

In Place of Politicals I 297
The pasting on of these stamps of varying value was monotonous
work requiring no artistry whatsoever. All the interrogator
needed was the next victim in. line, so as not to lose time. Such
victims were selected on the basis of arrest quotas by Security
chiefs of local administrative districts, military units, transportation
departments, and educational institutions. And so that the
.security chiefs did.not have to strain their brains, denunciations
from informers came in very handy.
In the conflicts between people in freedom, denunciations were
the superweapon, the X-rays: it was sufficient to direct an invisible
little ray at your enemy-and he fell. And it always worked. For
these cases I have not recollected the names of the individuals involved,
but I can afij.rm that I heard many stories in impriSonment
about the use of denunciations in lovers' quarrels: a man would
remove an unwanted husband; a wife would dispose of a mistress,
or a mistress would dispose of a wife; or a mistress would take
revenge on her lover because she had failed to separate him from
his wife.
The most frequently used postage stamp was Section 10-
counterrevolutionary (subsequently renamed anti-Soviet) agitation.
If our descendants should someday read the interrogation
and trial records of Stalin's times, they will be utterly astounded
to find what indefatigable and adroit operators those anti-Soviet
propagandil!ts were. They were quite capable of using a needle or
a tattered service cap for propaganda purposes, washed floors
(see below) or unwashed linens, a smile or its absence, too expressive
or too impenetrable a look, soundless thoughts inside the
skull, notes in an intimate diary, love letters, graffiti in toilets.
They propagandized on the highways and byways, at a fire, at the
collective-farm market, in the kitchen, behind thedoniestic tea
table, and in bed whispering in the ear. And only the invincible
social structure of socialism could withstand such a propaganda
assault!
In the Archipelago they used to love to joke that not all the
articles of the Criminal Code were accessible. One or another
person might wish to violate the law on protection of soCialist
property, but was not allowed near it. Some other person wouldn't
hesitate to commit embezzlement-but could not manage to get
a job as a cashier. To murder one had to have at least a knife; to
possess a weapon unlawfully one first' of all. had to acquire a
298 I THB GULAG AIlCHIPBLAG.O
weapon. To have carnal knowledge of animals one had to have
livestock. Even Article 58 was not so easily accessible: just how
can you betray the Motherland under the heading of Section 1 b if
. you don't serve in the army? How can you establish contact With
the world bourgeoisie, under Section 4, if you live in Khanty­
Mansiisk? And how c~ you subvert state industry and transportation,
under Section 7, if you work as a barber? If you don't
have at least a stinking old sterilizer so it can explode (chemical
engineer Chud~ov, arrested in 1948 for "diversionary activities")?
.
But Section 10 of Article 58 was universally accessible. To
aged old. women and twelve-year-old schoolboys. To married
and single, to pregnant women and virgins, to athletes and cripples,
to drunk and sober, to those who Clgl see and to the blind
too, to owners of automobiles and beggars of alms. One can earn
one's sentence via Section 10 just as readily in the winter as in
the SUDImer, on a weekday as on a Sunday, early morning and
late at night, at work or at home, on a stair landing, at a Metro
station, in a dense forest, in an intermission at the theater, or
during the course of a solar eclipSe.
The only other section which eould rival Section lOin its accessibility
was Section 12-failure to make a denunciation, or
"He knew but he didn't tell." All those same people listed above
could receive this section and in all the same eoliditions, but the
special advantage in this case was that one did not even have to
open one's mouth, nor take pen in hand. The whole point of this
section was f~ure to act! And the sentence was the same.: ten
years of imprisonment and five years "muzzled."
Of course, after the war Section 1 of Article 58-"treason to
the M()therland"-~o longer seemed difficult to attain either.
Not only all the POW's, not only all those who had been in occupied
territories had a rightto it, but even those who had dallied
over being evacua~d from threatened areas and who thereby disclosed
their intent to betray the Motherland. (Professor of mathematics
Zhuravsky asked for three plane seats out of Leningrad:
for his wife, his sick sister-in-law, and himself. They gave him
two, none for the sister-in-law. He sent oft' his wife and sister-inlaw
and stayed behind. The authorities could o~y interpret this
act to mean that the professor was waiting for the Gernians.
Article 58-1a,via 19, ten years.)