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

What tlJe Archipelago Stands On I 145
the principle of persuasion and re-education."1 "All bourgeois
penitentiary institutions try to 'harass' the criuiinal by subjecting
him to physical and moral suffering." (They wish to "reform"
him.) "In distinction from bourgeois punishment the sufferings
of the prisoners in our cowttry are not an end but a means. [Just
as there, too, it would seem not an end but a means.-A.S.) The
end in our country ... is genuine reform, genuine correction, so
conscientious laborers should emerge from the camps."
Now have you got it? Even though we use compulsion, we are
nonetheless correcting (and also, as it turns out, via suffering!)
-except it is not known exactly from what.
But right then and there, on a nearby page, we find:
"With the assistance of revolutionary violence the correctivelabor
camps localize and render harmless the criminal elements
of the old ~ociety."2 (We.are still talking about the old society!
And even in 1952 we will still keep talking about the "old s0-
ciety." "Pile everything on the wolf's neck"-blaine it all·onthe
old society I )
So not a single word about correction? We are localizing and
rendering harmless?
And then in that same 1934:
''The two-in,one task is suppression plus re-education of anyone
who can be re-educated."
Of anyone who can be re-educated. It becomes clear that correction
is not for everyone.
And now a ready-made phrase from somewhere already ftits
about among the small-time authors: ''the correction of the corrigibles,"
"the correction of the corrigibles."
And what about the incorrigibles? Into a common grave? Tp
the Moon (Kolyma)? Below Shmidtikha* (NorilSk)?
Even the Corrective Labor Code of 1924 was criticized by
. Vyshinsky's jurists, from the JIeights of 1934, for "a false concept
of universal correction." Because this code says nothing
about destruction.
No one promised that they would correct the 58's.
And therefore I have called this Part "The Destructive-Labor
Camps." That's how we felt them on our pelts.
I. A. Y. Vyshinsky, from his preface to I. L. Averbakh, op. cit., p. vi.
2. Ibid .. p. vii. . .
146 I THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
And if some of the jurists' quotations fit together crookedly, so
be it, just go raise up Stuchka from the grave, or drag out Vyshinsky,
and let them make head or tail of it. I am not to blame.
It is only now, on sitting down to write my own book, that I
decided to leaf through my predecessors' works; yes, good people
had to help even here, because you'd not now be able to find
their works anywhere. And as we dragged our soiled camp pea
jackets about, we never even guessed at the existence of such
books. That all our life there in camp was determined not by the
will of the citizen chief but by some kind of legendary labor code
for prisoners-that was not just an obscure latrine rumor for us
alone; even the chief of the-camp, a major, wouldn't have believed
it for anything. Published in an edition "for official use only,"
never held in anyone's hands, and no one knew whether they
were still kept in the Gulag safes or whether they had all been
burned as wrecking activity. Neither were quotations from them
hung up in the cultural and educational corners, nor were their
miserable figures proclaimed from the wooden rostrums: How
many hours long was the workday? How many rest days in a
month? Is there payment for labor? Was there any provision for
mutilation? Yes, and you would get a big horse laugh from your
fellow zeks too if you even asked such questions. .
Our diplomats were the ones who had seen and read these
humane words. They had, it would seem, held up and brandished
this booklet at international conferences. Indeed! I myself have
onlJJlow obtained the quotations-and even now my tears flow:
• In the Guiding Principles of 1919: Given the fact that punishment
is not vengeance, then it may include no elements of
torture.
• In 1920: The use of the condescending familiar form of
address is forbidden in speaking to the prisoners. (And, forgive
my language, but what about ."--- in the mouth"-is that
permissible? )
• The Corrective Labor Code of 1924, Article 49: "The
prison regime must be deprived of all elemetlts of torture; handcuffs,
punishment cells [!], strict solitary confinement, deprivation
of food, visits through a grating only are under no circumstances
permitted."
Well, that's enough. And there are no later instructions. That's
enough even for the diplomats. And not even that is needed by
Gulag.