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

The Archipelago Rises from the Sea I 69
stead "applied the Leninist principle: 'Shock work-Shock maintenance.'''
What this meant was that the commune members
were moved into separate barracks where they got softer bedding,
warmer clothing, and were fed separately and better (at the expense
of all the rest of the prisoners, of course). Tlie commune
members liked this very much, and for the purpose of keeping
all their fellow members in the commune, they established the
rule that-there would be no more expulsions from it.
This sort of .commune was also very popular among rwncom-
. mune members. And ~ey all applied for admission to the
commune. However," it was decided not to take them into the
commune but to create second, third, and fourth "labor collectives,"
which would not have all those privileges. And in any
case, the 58's were not accepted in any of the collectives, even
though in the newspaper the most impudent of the hoodlums
instructed the 58's: It's time, really, it's time, to grasp that camp
is a school for labor!
dn~ the reports were flown by·plane to Gulag headquarters:
Miracles at Solovki! A turbulent turning point in the attitude of
--the thieves! All the Plll!sion of the criminal world had been redirected
into shock work, socialist competition, fulfillment of
the production aRd financial plan! And in Gulag they were suitably
astonished, and they broadcast the results of the experiment.
And that is how Solovki began to live: part of the camp was
in the "labor collectives," and their percentage of plan fulfillment
had· not simply risen but doubled! (And the Cultural and
Educational Section explained this by the influence of the collective.
But we know what it was--common garden-variety camp
padding of work sheets--"tukhta.")83
The other part of the camp, the "unorganized" part (yes, and
also underfed, and underdressed, and engaged in * heaviest
work), failed, as one can well understand, to fulfill its work
norms.
In February. 1931, a conference of Solovetsky shock brigades
70 I THB GULAG ARCHI]>BLAGO
deCreed "a broad wave of socialist competition to answer the
new slander of the capitalists about forced labor'in the U.S.S:R."
In March there were already 136 shock brigades. then suddenly
in April their general liquidation was decreed-because
"a llostile-claSs element had permeated the collectives for the
pUrpose of causing them to disintegrate." (Now there's a rid~e'
for you: the 58's were nof allowed across the threshold; and so
who was it who Was causing them to disintegrate? What~we have
to understand is that the "tukhta" had been uncovered. They had
eaten and drunk and made merry; they had counted things up,
shed a few tears, and taken the whip to some so the rest would
get moving.)
And the joyous hubbub gave way to the noiseless dispatCh of
the prisoner transports: the 58's were being sent from the Solovetsky
mother tumor to far-oft' fatal places to open up new camps
there.
33. J have been reproached with spelling this word incorrectly, and told
that it should be written as it is correctly pronounced in thieves' jargon: luFla.
For tllKHta is the peasants' assimilation of it, just like "Khvyodor" for "Fyodor."
But I like it: "tuKHta" is somehow akin to the'RuAian language, while
"tuFta" is totally alien. The thieves bfought it, but the whole Russian people
learned it--so let it be ''tuKHta."