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

"They've Brought the Fascists'" I 181
though she was already over forty. (Not one camp girl wore a
scarf like that in the brickyard, and not one free Komsomol girl
either.) She bore no grudge for her husband's execution, nor for
her own eight years of imprisonment; All these injustices had
been caused, in her opinion, by individual Yagoda or Yezhov
henchmen, and under Comrade Beria the only arrests 'being made
were just. Seeing me in the uniform of a Soviet officer, she said
at our first meeting: "Those who arrested me can now see the
proofs of my orthodoxy." Not long before she had written a
letter to Kalinin, and she quoted from it to all who wished or
were forced to listen: "My long sentence has not broken my
will in the struggle for the Soviet government, for Soviet industry."
.
Me-anwhile when Akimov had come and reported to her that
the thieves refused to obey him, she herself did not go to explain
to this socially friendly- element that their conduct was harming
industry, but she pulled him up short: "You have to compel
them! That's why you were appointed!" Akimov was beaten up,
and she made no effort to struggle further, but merely wrote the
camp: "Don't send us that contingent any more." She also accepted
very calmly the fact that in her factory young girls
worked eight hours, straight at automatic m~chines; they were
confined uninterruptedly for the whole eight-hour period to
monotonous motions at the conveyor belt. She said: "There is
nothing to be done; there are more important sectors than that
for mechanization." The day before, Saturday, there had. been
a rumor going the rounds that they would again not give us our
Sunday off (and that's exactly what happened). The young girls
at the automatic machines clustered around her and said to her
bitterly: "Olga Petrovna! Are they really going to take our Sunday
away from us again? After all, this is the third in a row! The
war's over!" Wearing her red scarf, sh)' indignantly tossed her
dry, dark profile, which wasn't a woman's, nor a man's either:
"Girls! What right have we to a Sunday? The construction project
in Moscow is being held up because there are no bricks!" (In .
other words, of course, she didn't know anything about any particular
construction project to which our bricks were being sent,
but in her mind's eye she could see that big generalized construction
project, and here were these young girls, so vile as to want to
wash their things.)
I was necessary to Matronina in order to double the number of
182 I THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
cars of clay in one shift. She took no account of the strength
of the sloggers, the condition of the cars, or the capacity of the
pressing plant, but merely demanded that it be doubled!' (And
how could aD outsider unacquainted with the setup double the
number of carloads except with his fist?) I did not double the
output, anet by and large the output did no! change by one
carload under me--and Matronina, merciless, scolded me in
Barinov's presence and that of the workers, without being able
to get through her woman's head that which the least sergeant
knows: that one must not dress down even a corporal in the
presence of a private. And then on one occasion, admitting my
~tot defeat in the clay pit, and therefore my incapacity to direct,
Iwent to Matronina and; as gently as I could, asked her:
"Olga Petrovna! I am a good mathematician; I do figures
quickly. I have heard that you need an accountant in the plant.
Take me!".
"An accountant?" she raged, and her cruel face- grew even
darker, and the ends of her red scarf wound about the back of
her h~ad. "rn put any wisp of a girl to work as an accountant,
but what we need are commanders of production. How many
loads are you short for your shift? Be off with you!" And, like
a new Pallas Athena, with outstretched arm she sent me back to
the clay pit. ..
And a day later the position of foreman of the clay pit was
abolished, and I was fired, not just straightforwardly b~t vengefully.
Matronina sl,llDJDoned Barinov and gave him his orders:
"Put him to work with a crowbar and don't take your eyes
off him! Make him load six cars a shift! Make him sweat!"
And right then, in my officer's uniform in which I took so much
pride, I went forth to dig clay. Barinov was overjoyed. He had
foreseen my fall.
If I had better understood the secret, alert connection between
all camp events, I could have guessed at my fate the day before.
In the Novy Iyerusalim mess hall tb,.ere was a separate ~erving
,window for the ITR's-the'Engineering and Technical Workers
-from which the engineers, bookkeepers, and . . . shoemakers
received their meals. After my appointment as foreman of the
clay pit, catching on to the camp grasp of things, I had approached
this window and demanded my meal. The cooks
dragged their feet about it, saying that I wasn't on the list of
'