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

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The Kids I 459
The big strong Latvian Martinson was careless enough to
appear in the compound wearing the high brown leather bOQts of
an English aviator which were laced over hooks up to knee
height. He wouldn't even talce them off at night and was confident
of his strength. But they ambushed him when he lay down for a
brief nap on the rostrum in the mess hall. The gang swooped'"­
swiftly to the assault, and fled just as swiftly, and he was without
his boots! All the laces had been cut BIld the boots jerked off.
Look for them? But where? The bOOts would have been sent
outside the compound immediately, through one of the jailers(!),
and there sold for a high price. (And what didn't the kids "float"
out of the compound ~o be sold! Each time the camp ~hiefs,
taking pity on their youth, issued them even slightly better footgear
or duds, or some flattened-out pads for mattresses that had
been taken away from the 58's-in several days it would all have
been traded to the free employees for makhqrka, and the kids
would once more be going around in tatters and sleeping on
bare boards.) _
It was enough for a careless free worker to go into the camp
compound with a dog and turn his head for one second. And he
could buy his dog's pelt that very same evening outside-the camp
compound: the dog would have been coaxed away, knifed,
skinned, and cooked, all in a trice.
There is nothing finer than thievery and brigandage I They
provide nourishment. They are jolly. But young bodies also need
elp~ exercise, innocent enjoyment, and relaxation. If they
er~w given hammers to nail shell boxes together, they would
brandish them about incessantly and, with huge enjoyment (even
the girls), hammer nails into anything that came to hand-,­
tables, walls, tree stumps. They used to be constantly fighting with
each other-not just to knock over a breadbox, but, really
fighting, they would pursue each other over bunks and in the
aisles. And it didn't matter that they were stepping on legs, on
belongings, spilling things, soiling things, waking people up,
hurting others. They were playing!
All children play like that, but for all ordinary children there
are nonetheless parents (in our epoch, unfortunately, no more
than "nonetheless"), an.!I there is some controlling force over
them, and _ they can be stopped, they can be reached, punished.
sent away. But in camp all that was impossible. To get through
460 I THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
to the kids with words was simply impossible. Human speech
was Qot for them. Their ears simply didn't admit anything that
they themselves didn't need. H irritated old men started to grab
them and pull them up short, the kids would hurl heavy objects
at them. The kids found amuseme~t in just about anything .
. They would grab the field shirt off an elderly invalid and play
"Keep away"-forcing him to run back and forth jus~ as if he
were their own age. Does he become angry and leave? Then
he will never see it again! They will have sold it outside the
compound for a smoke! (And they will even come up to him
afterward innocently: "Papasha! Give us a light! Oh, come on
now, don't be angry. Why did you leave? Why didn't you stay
and catch it?")
For adults, fathers and grandfathers, these boisterous games of
the kids in the crowded conditions of camp could cause more
anguish and be more hurtful than their robbing and their
rapacious greed. It proved to be one of the most sensitive forms
of humiliation for an elderly person to be made equal with a
young whippersnapper-if only it were equal! But" not to be
turned over to the tyranny of the whippersnappers.
The kids' actions were unpremeditated, and they didn't mean
to cause hurt or offense. They weren't pretending; they simply did
not consider anyone a human being except themselves and the
older thieves. That is how they came to perceive the world, and
now they clung to that view. At the end of work they would
break into a column of adult zeks who were utterly fagged out,
hardly able to stand, sunk in a kind of trance or reverie. The
kids would jostle the column, not because they had to be firstthis.
meant nothing-but just for the fun of it. They used to talk
noisily, constantly taking the name of Pushkin in vain. ("Pushkin
took it!" "Pushkin ate itl") They used to direct obscene curses
at God, Christ, and the Holy Virgin, and they would shout out
all sorts of obscenity about sexual deviations and perversions,
not even shamed by the presence of elderly women standing
there-let alone the younger ones.
During their short camp stay they attained the peak, the
summit, of freedom from society! During the periods of long
roll calls in the camp compound the ~s used to chase each
other around, torpedoing the crowd, kno~king people into one
another. ("Well, peasant, why were you in the way?") Or they