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

"They've Brought the Fascists!" I 187
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''They've brought the Fascists! They've brought the Fascists!" was
. a-cry heard not only in Novy Iyerusalim. In the late summer and
autuDlll of 1945, that's how it was on all-the islands of theArchi- .
pelaga'. Our arrival-that of the F ascists-opened up the road to
freedom for the nonpolitical offenders. They had learned of their
amnesty back on July 7; sipce that time they had been photographed,
and their release documents had been readied, and their
accounts in the bookkeeping offices. But first -for one month,
then in places for two, and in some p~aces for three months,
the amnestied zeks had been languishing within the nauseating
barbed-Wire boundaries. There was 1).0 one to replace theml -
There was no one to replace them!
And we, newborn blind innocents that we were; in oUr
calked-up cells, had continued to hope all spring and suri:uner for
an amnesty! That Stalin would take pity on usi That _he would
"take account of the Victory"! ... That, having passed us over
in the first, the July, amnesty, he would subsequently deciare·a
, second aninesty, a special ainnesty for political prisoners. ('they
used to report even one detail: this amnesty was already prePared;
it was lying on Stalin~8 desk, and all that was left was for him to
sign it; but he was off on vacation. The incori~bles awaited a
- genuine amnesty, the incorrigibles believed! ... ) .But if we had
been -pardoned, then who wou!d have gone down into the mineS?
. Who would have gone into the forests with saws? Who would
have fired the bricks and laid them in walls? Stalin had managed
to create a system under w~ch-if it. had manifested generosity
or mercy-pestilence, famine, desolation, and ruin would have
immediately embraced the entire cowitry.
~v'yehT' brought the Fascists!" They had always hated us or
at least disdained us, but now the nonpolitical offenders looked
upon us almost with love because '?{e had come to take their
places. And those same prisoners w.ho had learned, in German
captivity, that there is no nation more despised, more abandoned,
more alien and unneeded than the Russian, now learned, leaping
down from red cattle cars and trucks onto the Russian earth, that
even among this outcast people they were the most benighted
and grievous of all.
188 THE GULAG A&C81l'ELAGO
Now that is what that great Stalinist amnesty turned out to be,
one such as "the world had never seen.".Where, indeed, had the
world ever seen an amnesty which did not concern poJiticals?!?5
All those who had burglarized apartments, stolen the clothes
off passers-by, raped girls, corrupted minors, given consumers
short weight, played the hoodlum, disfigured the defenseless, been
wantonly destructive in forests and waterways, committed bigamy,
practiced blackmail or extortion, taken bribes, swindled, slandered,
written false denunciations (but· those particular people
didn't actually even serve time at all-that's for the future!),
peddled narcotics, pimped or forced women into prostitution,
whose carelessness or ignorance had resulted in the loss of life,
all went scot-free. (And I have merely listed here the articles of
the Code covered by the amnesty; this is not a mere flourish of
eloquence. )
And then they want morality from the people!
Half their terms were elimiriated for: embezzlers, forgers of
documents and ration cards, speculators, and thieves of state
property. (Stalin still was touchy about the pockets of the state.)
-But there was nothing so repugnant to the fo~er . front-line
soldiers and POW's as the universal blanket pardon of deserters
in wartime. Every man who, out of cowardice, ran away from his
unit, left the front, did not show up at the conscription point, hid
for many years. in .a pit in the vegetable garden of his mother's
home, in cellars, behind the stove (always at the mother's! deserters,
as a rule, did not trust their wives!), who for years had
nQt pronounced one word aloud~ who had turned into hunched-up
hairy beasts-all of them, as long as they ·had been caught or had
5. It freed 58'~ who had sentences of up to three years, a sentence almost
never given anyone, probably not as many as one-half of one percent of those
to whom if applied. But even among that one-half percent of the cases, the
implacable spirit of the amnesty proved stronger than its conciliatory wording.
I knew one lad~his name, I believe, was Matyushin (be was an artist in the
little camp at the Kaluga Gates)-who had been sentenced under 58-1b very
early on, even before the end of 1941, for having been taken prisoner wben it
had not yet been decided how this was to be 'treated, or what term to give.
They gave Matyushin just three years---4lJl unbelievable happening! At the end
of his term, he was of course not freed, but was told to await Ute Special Decree.
But then came the iunnesty! Matyushin began to ask (there was nowhere
he could demand) for release. For almost five months-until December, 1945
-the frightened officials of the Classification and Records Sectioll turned him
down. Finally be was released to go back home ·to Kursk Province. There was
, a rumor (and it's quite impossible to believe in any other outcome!) that soon
afterward he was raked in and given something up to a whole tenner. It was
impermissible to allow him to' take advantage of the absent-mindedness of the
first court!