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

The Loyalists I 34S
supply chief (whom a slogger would pass without a glance) like
this: "How can I serve you, Citizen Chief?"
For the chief of the Medical Section Todorsky composed a
synopsis of the Short Course of Party history. H Todorsky ever
had any thoughts in the least unlike those in the Short Course,
then where were his principles, how could he compose a synopsis
exactly according to StaIin?8 And if he really thought precisely
like that, then that's what is called ''perished comically."
But it is too little to love one's camp bosses! What is required
is that the bosses love you. It is necessary to explain, to the' chiefs
that we are of the same stuff as you, and you have to take care
of us somehow. And this is why the heroes of Serebryakova,
Shelest, Dyakov, Aldan-Semyonov on every occasion, whether
necessary or not, whether convenient or not, when the prisoner
transport is being received, when the names are read out from
the lists, declare themselves Communists. That is their application
for a cozy spot!
Shelest even thinks up a scene like this. At the Kotlas 'I'ransit
Prison the roll is being called. "Party member?" asks the chief.
(What tools is he writing this for? Where in .a prison list is there
a column for Party mem~p?) "Member of the Communist
Party of Bolsheviks," replies Shelest to the faked question.
And one has to give the chiefs their due, D~ky men or
Beria men: they heard. And •.. they arranged things for them.
Yes, and were there not perh~ps same written' or at least oral
directives: to make things easier for the Communists? For even
in periods of the sharpest persecutions of the 58's, when they were
being ousted from all jobs as trusties, former big-shot Communists
for some reason kept their places. (For example, in KrasJag.
Former member of the Military Council of the North Caucasus
Military District Aralov remained as brigadier of the vegetable
gardeners, and former General Ivanchik remained as a brigadier
for. cottages, and former secretary of the Moscow Committee
Dedkov also kept a soft spot.) But even without any directive,
plain solidarity and plain self-interest-"You today, me tomor·
row"-were bound to compel the MVD men to look after the
true believers.
'
8. They will object: Principles are principles, but- somt:times it is necesSary
to be elastic. There was a period when Ulbricht and Dimitrov instructed their
Communist Parties to make peace with the Nazis and even support them. Well,
we have nothing to top that: that's dillkctic8/
346 I THB GULAG AlI.CHIPBLAGO
And the way it turned out was that the chiefs kept the orthodox
Communists at their right hand so that they constituted a firmly
establiShed privileged stratum in camp. (But this did not extend
to the quiet rank-and-fil~. Communists who did not go to the
chiefs to trumpet their faith.)
Aldan-Semyonov writes quite straightf9rwardly that the Communist
camp chiefs tried to transfer. Communist prisoners to
lighter work. And Dyakov doesn't conceal it either: The newcomer
Rom announced to the chief of the hospital that he w~
an Old BolShevik. And right away he was assigned as a Medical
Section clerk-an enviable post! And the camp chief also gave
orders that Todorsky was not to be removed from his post as a
medical orderly.
But the most remarkable case of all is recounted by O. Shelest
in his Kolyma Notes: 8 A new MVD big shot arrived there 'and
recognized the priSoner Zaborsky as his former corps commander
from the Civil War. They wept on meeting. Go ahead, ask half
my kingdom! And Zaborsky·agreed to accept "special food from
the kitchen and to take as much bread as he needed" (in other
words, to eat the bread of the sIoggers, since no one was going to
prescribe a new ration norm for him), and asked only to be
. given a six-volume set of Lenin to read in the evening by the
light of the kerosene lamp! And that is how everything was arranged;
during the day he was fed with stolen rations; in the
evening he read Lenin! And that is how openly and with enjoJ-'
ment vileness is glorified! .
Shelest writes about some kind of mythical "underground
politburo" of the work brigade (a bit too big a deal, wasn't it;"
for a work brigade?), which managed to get hold of a loaf of
bread from the bread-cuttirig room after hours, as well as a
bowl of oatmeal. And what that means is that we have our own
trusties everywhere. And also: Let's swipe what we can, Goodthinkers?
That very same Shelest gives us his fuial conclusion:
"Some survived thanks to their strength of spirit [those were
. those orthodox Communists swiping bread and cereal-A.S.],
while others survived thanks to an extra bowl of oatmeal [that
was Ivan Denisovich]."lO
9. Znamya (The Banrrer), 1964, No.9.
10. Zabaikalslcy Rtzbochl (Trans-Baikal Worker), August 27. 1964.