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

The Zeks as a Nation I 525
in this situation they themselves commit only injustices-and
one would think it had. long since been time for them to grow
used to it and to accept injustice as theumversal norm of life.
But no; not at all! Every injustice on the part of the elders in the
tribe and the tribal guardians continues to wound them, and to
wound them. just as much as it did on their first day. (But injustice
which rises from the bottom to the top provokes their
hearty and ap)'roving laughter.) And in their folklore they do
not create legends so much about justice as, in an exaggeration
of this feeling, about unjustified magnanimity. (And thus it was
that the myth about magnanimity to F. Kaplan was created and
lasted for decades in the Archipelago-alleging that she had not
been shot but confined for life in various prisons, and there were
even many witnesses to be found who had been with her on
prisoner transports or had received books from the Butyrki Prison
library from her.14 One asks why the. nativeS needed this nonsensical
myth. Only as an extreme case of inordinate magnanimity
in which they wanted to believe. They·then in their 'mind's
eye could apply it to themselves.)
Instances are also known of a zek's coming to love his work
in the Archipelago (A. S. Bratchikov: "I am proud of what I
made with my own hands"), or afleast not disliking it (the zeks
of German origin), but these cases are so exceptional that we' are
not going to offer them even. as an eccentricity, let alone a universal
trait of the people.
And let not the already cited native trait of secretiveness seem
in contradiction with another native trait: a love of telling stories
about the past. Among all backward peoples this is a custom of
the old men; and people of middle age actively dislike talking
~uoba the past and are even ~aid to (particUlarly women, and
particularly people filling out security questionnaires, yes,and in
general everyone). In this regard the zeks behave like a nation
14. Not long ago the Commandant of the Krenilin, Comrade Malkov, officially
repudiated these rumors and described how he had shot Kaplan at the .
time. And Demyan Bedny was present at the execution too. And her absence
as a witie~s at the trial of the SR's in 1922 ought to have convinced the zeks!
But they don't remember that trial at all. We suppose tIuit the rumor about the
life imprisonment of F. Kaplan arose from the life imprisonment of Berta
Gandal. This woman, suspectiOg nothing, arrived in MoJcpw from Riga on the
very day.of the attempted assassination of Lenin, ",bllll thll brothers Gandal
(who 'bad been waiting in an automobile for Kaplan) 1II{Cq-..... Awl that .was
why Berta got life imprisonment.
526 I THE. GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
consisting only of old men. (In another respect-smce.they have
instructors-they are, on the contrary, maintained like a nation
of children.~ You wouldn't be able to squeeze a word out of them
about the petty secrets of today's daily life-such as where to
warm up .one's mess tin, or who's got makhorka to barter-but
they will tell you everything about the past without concealment,
disclosing everything: how they lived before the Archipelago and
with whom and how they got here. (For hours at a time they
listen to stories