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

the A.rchipelago Metastasizes I' 113
please, but don't get entangled in your lying. "Today, too, the
banner of Belomor waves over us," writes the newspaper Reforging.
That's a moderate statement And it is quite enough.
In any event, both at Belomor and at the Moscow-Volga Canal
they understood that "camp competition an4 the shock-worker
movement must be tied in with the entire system of rewards" so
that the special rewards would stimulate the shock-worker movement.
"The principal basis of' competition is material incentive."
(I?I? It would seem we've, been thrown about-face? We
have turned from East to West? One hundred eighty degrees?
Is this a provocation! Hold tight to the handrails! The car is
going through!) And things worked out like this: On production
indices depended . . . nutrition and housing and clothing and
linen and the frequency of baths! (Yes, yes, whoever works
badly can go about in tatters and lice!) And liberation ahead of
time! And rest days! And visits! For example, issuing a shock
worker's lapel button is a purely socialist form of encouragement.
But let that button confer the right to a long visit out of tum!
And by this means it becomes more precious than bread rations.
"If in freedom, in accordance with the Soviet Constitution, we
apply the principle of whoever does not work does not eat, then
why should we put the camp inmates in a privileged position?"
(The most difficult thing in organizing a camp: they must not
become privileged places!) The ration scale at Dmitlag was this:
The. penalty ration consisted of muddy water and ten and a half
ounces of bread. One hundred percent fulfillment of· norm earned
the right to twenty-eight ounces of bread and the right to buy
in addition three and a half ounces in the camp commissary. And
then "submission to discipline begins out of egotistical motives
(self-interest in gettirig a better bread ration) and rises to the
second step of socialist self-interest in the red banner."'o
But the main thing was time oft sentence I Time oft sentence!
The socialist competition headquarters compiles a report Qn the
prisoner. For time pft sentence not only overfulfillment of plan
is required, but also social work. And anyone who in the past
has been a nonworking element gets reduced time oft sentence,
miserly small. "Such a person can only pretend, not reform! He
must be kept in camp longer so as to be verified." (For example,
31. Winter on the canal (painting)
32. "Volunteers"
40. In bis private life Averbakh probably began immediately with the second
step.