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

The Archipelago Metastasizes I 87
importance. Because if it had not been urgent, then they would
not have been willing to die off and clear the way for the new
society.
''The canal must be built in a short time and it must be built
'cheaply! These were Comrade St~lin's instructions." (And everyone
who was alive then remembers what the orders of Comrade
Stalin meant!) Twenty months!, That was the time the Great
Leader allotted his criminals both for the canal and for their own
correction: from September, 1931, to April, 1933. He was in
such a rush he would not even give them two full years. One
hundred and forty miles. Rocky soil. An area abounding in boulders.
·Swamps. Seven locks in the Povenets "st~rcase," twelve
locks on the descent to the Wllite Sea. And "this was no Dneprostroi,
which was allowed a long time for completion and allotted
foreign exchange. Belomorstroi was entrusted to .the OGPU and
received not one kopeck in foreign exchanger'
So the plan looms more and more clearly: This canal was so
. badly needed by Stalin and the nation that it was not to get one
kopeck of foreign exchange. Lei a hundred thoUsand prisoners
work for you simultaneously-what capital is more precious?
And deliver the canal in twenty months! Not one day later.
That's when you rant and rage at the wrecker engineers. The
engineers say: "We will m~ the structure of concrete," The
Chekists reply: "There is not enough time." The engineers say:
"We, need large quantities of iron." The Chekists reply: "Replace
it with wood!" The engineers say: "We need tractors, cranes,
construction machinery!" The Chekists: "There will be none of
that, not one kopeck of foreign exchange: do it all by hand."
The book calls this "the bold Chekist formulation of a technical
assignment. "18 In other words, the Rappoport cosine.
We were in such a rush that we brought in people from Tashkent
for this northern project, hydrotechnologists 'and irrigation
experts (arrested, as it happened, at the most opportune time).
With them a Special (once again special, a favorite word!) Design
Bureau was set up on Furkasovsky Lane (behind the Big Lubyanka).17
(Incidentally, the Chekist Ivanchenko 'asked the en-
16. Belomorskti-Baltiisky Kanal, op. cit., p. 82.
17. This was thus one of the very earliest sharashkas, Islands of Paradise.
At the same time people mention one other like it: the OKB-the Special Design
Bureau-at the Izhora ,Factory which designed the first famous blooming
mill for semifinished steel ingots.
88 I THB GULAG .ARCHIPBLAGO
gineer Zhurin: ''Why should you make a plan when there already
is a plan for the Volga-Don Canal project? Use it instead.")
We were in such a rush that they were put to work making a
plan before surveys had been made on the ground. Of course we
rushed survey crews into Karelia. But not one of the designers
was allowed to leave even the bounds of the design office, let alone
go to Karelia (this was vigilance). And therefore telegrams flew
back and forth! What kind of an elevation do you have there?
What kind of soil?
We were in such a rush that trainloads of zeks kept on ar~
riving and arriving at the canal site before there were any barracks
there, or supplies, or tools, or. a precise plan. And what was to
be done? (There were no barracks, but there was an early northern
autumn. There were no tools, but the first month of the twenty
was already passing.) 18
We were in such a rush that thl? engineers who finally arrived
at the canal site had no drafting papers, no rulers, no-tltumbtacks
(I), and not even any light in their work barracks. They worked
under kerosene wick lamps, and our authors rave that it was just
like during the Civil War.
In the jolly tone of inveterate merrymakers they tell us: Women
came in silk dresses and were handed a wheelbarrow on the spot!
And "how many, many encounters there were with old acquaintances
in Tunguda: former students, Esperantists, c.omrades in
arms from White Guard detachments!" The comrades in arms
from the White Guard detachments had long since encountered
each other on Solovki, but we are grateful to the authors for the
information that Esperantists and students also got their White
Sea Canal wheelbarrows! Almost choking with laughter, they tell
us: From the Krasnovodsk camps in Central Asia, from Stalinabad,
from Samarkand, they brought Turkmenians and Tadzhiks
in their Bukhara robes and turbans-here to the Karelian subzero
winter cold! Now that was something the Basmachi rebels never
expected! The norm here was to break up two and a half cubic
yards of granite and to move it a distance of a hundred yards in a
wheelbarrow. ·And the snow kept falling and covering everything
up, and the wheelbarrows somersaulted off the gangways into the
snow. Approximately like this (illustration No. 16).
I
18. Plus several hidden-tukhta--months of the preliminary organizational
period not reported anywhere.