Resistance in the Gulag Archipelago (1918-1956) Read online

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  The Russians claimed they wanted

  to set up a paradise on earth-

  their subconscious chose hell.

  They have murdered their scientists,

  their poets, the soul of their people.

  The criminal is spreading in every country.

  In totalitarian countries it is those in power who are criminal.

  Eugene Ionesco (1974)

  An excerpt from “No,”

  Esquire, December 1974:254.

  A quarter of a century ago, with the great hopes

  of mankind, the United Nations was born. Alas, in

  the immoral world it, too, became immoral. It is

  not a United Nations but a United Governments, in

  which those freely elected and those imposed by force

  and those which seized power by arms are all

  on a par. Through the mercenary bias of the majority,

  the UN jealously worries about the freedom of some peoples

  and pays no attention to the freedom of others. By an officious

  vote it rejected the review of PRIVATE COMPLAINTS –the groans,

  shouts and pleadings of individual, common PLAIN PEOPLE –

  insects too small for such a great organization. The UN never tried

  to make BINDING on governments, a CONDITION of their

  membership, the Declaration of Human Rights, the outstanding

  document of its twenty-five years and- thus the UN betrayed the

  common people to the will of governments they had not chosen.

  -Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1972)

  Nobel Lecture: 25-26.

  Translated from the Russian by F.D. Reeve

  The Gulag Archipelago (1973) is in scope and density worthy of its subject, which is nothing less than the most massive and systematic repression of a people by its leaders that the world has ever known. The Bolsheviks inherited prison camps from the Romanov monarchy they overthrew, but what had been a purely punitive institution under the tsars became an economic one as well under the commissars. Slave labor attained its apotheosis under Joseph Stalin and his last police chief, Lavrenti Beria. One must preclude discussing particular instances of resistance by first recognizing the relationship between industrial construction and the proliferation of forced labor camps.

  Their growth was simultaneous. By the latter nineteen-thirties, the Gulag was responsible for much of the country’s lumbering and extraction of gold, copper, and coal. Gulag camps built important canals, strategic roads, and many industrial enterprises in remote regions. This pervasive use of forced labor, however, had dangerous consequences:

  In the first place, the harsh regime established in 1936 used up labor quickly, with a consequent need for replacement. Secondly, because Stalin did not find a rational solution for the problem of building in remote regions, he constantly increased the number of projects assigned to Gulag. 1

  State plans even encompassed the mortality rate of the forced laborers. Conclusively, it appears that a vicious circle was created insofar as the system of forced labor became a cause as well as an effect of mass repression.

  Resistance by the peasant population to assaulting forced labor was not as obscure as it might appear. D.M. Sturley (1964) observes in A Short History of Russia that protest was employed, futile as it was in stifling Stalin:

  Results of the Forced Collectivization did permit the introduction of more efficient methods, the cultivation of new crops, and increased production, but the immediate effects were appalling. The peasants resisted and had to be driven into the collective by the use of machine-guns or by the threat of deportation and forced labour. Rather than hand over their stock to the State they slaughtered and ate it and refused to till the fields. In 1929, there were thirty-four million houses in the U.S.S.R.; in 1933 there were only sixteen and one-half million; thirty million cattle (about 45 percent of the total) had been killed off. Once again in 1932-1933 the country was faced with one of the worst famines it had ever known. The kulaks disappeared, about five million of them, mostly in the forced labour camps and the slow death which they meant. 2

  Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1973) tells of how Stalinist rule in the 1920’s quashed any and all forms of dissent vis-à-vis the establishment of permanently operating “troikas” whose purpose it was to bypass the courts. These so called OSO tribunes were composed of panels of three. They were also known as the Troikas of the GPU:

  Up to 1924, the authority of the Troika was limited to sentences of three years, maximum. From 1924 on, they moved up to five years of camp; from 1937 on, the OSO could turn out “ten ruble bills”; after 1948, they could rivet a”quarter”-twenty-five years-on you. And there are people –Chavdarov, for example – who know that during the war years the OSO even sentenced prisoners to execution by shooting. Nothing unusual about this. 3

  These troikas utilized three deterrents which served to quash dissent throughout the Gulag archipelago. Their primary and principal distinguishing feature was closed doors. 4 They were first of all closed courts –for their own convenience. Secondly, in order to avoid any lack of ambiguity they established and utilized a system of predetermined verdicts. 5

  Thirdly, dialectics entered the troika operational scheme. All the articles of the code had become permeated with instructions, directions, and interpretations. And, if the actions of the accused are not covered by the Code, he can still be convicted:

  • By analogy (What opportunities!)

  • Simply because of origins (7-35: belonging to a socially dangerous milieu)

  • For contacts with dangerous persons (here’s scope for you!) Who is ‘dangerous’ and what ‘contacts’ consist of only the judge can say. 6

  Directives were issued by Stalin and Beria at their annual convenience. As Solzhenitsyn unveils this system, one comes to realize that it is not the judge that judges. The judge merely receives a substantial salary for his physical appearance, the directives did the judging.

  The directive of 1937: ten years; twenty years; execution by shooting. The directive of 1934: twenty years at hard labor; hanging. The directive of 1945: ten years for everyone, plus five years of disenfranchisement (manpower for three Five-Year Plans). The directive of 1949: everybody gets twenty-five. 7

  Roy A. Medvedev (1972) accurately summarizes the events surrounding the Great Purges which preceded the implementation of the above stated Stalinist directives.

  In 1936-39, on the most cautious estimates, four to five million people were subjected to repression for political reasons. At least four to five hundred of them-above all the high officials –were summarily shot; the rest were given long terms of confinement. In 1937-38 there were days when up to a thousand people were shot in Moscow alone. These were not streams, these were rivers of blood of honest Soviet people. The simple truth must be stated: not one of tyrants and despots of the past persecuted and destroyed so many of his compatriots. 8

  One can undoubtedly ask the question as to why no resistance occurred among the judges and other persons assigned to carrying out the directives of Joseph Stalin. Were they not cognizant of the consequences of their actions? Medvedev’s reasoning is accurate as we will be witnessing when examining Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s two novels, Cancer Ward and The First Circle, as appertaining to the question at hand.

  Most of the judges and procurators must have known what they were doing when they sanctioned the arrest of innocent people and sentenced them to be shot or imprisoned. These officers of the law knew that they were creating lawlessness, but they chose to be its creators rather than its victims! What turned many NKVD officials into sadists? What forced them to break the laws of humanity? Many of them were once good Communists or Komsonol members who joined the NKVD on orders, not at all by inclination. Many influences were at work on them. In the first place there was the fear of becoming prisoners themselves, which overrode all other f
eelings. Secondly, a terrible selection went on within the NKVD, sifting out some officials, leaving the worst. Many-and this must not be overlooked-were corrupted by the unlimited power of the prisoners that Stalin gave to the NKVD. NKVD personnel were specially trained to be capable of carrying out any order, even the most criminal. The special brigade of torturers, for example, usually included students from the NKVD schools, young people eighteen to twenty years old. They were taken to torture chambers as medical students are to dissection laboratories, and thus were turned to sadists. 9

  In accordance with the dehumanizing world created here, Alexander Solzhenitsyn is quick to draw the essential distinction between the Tsarist Code and the Stalinist Code.

  And especially new and important was the fact that we did not draw the distinction between methods and means the old Tsarist Code had drawn. Such distinctions had no influence either on the classification of the charges or on the penalties imposed! For us, intent and action were identical! A resolution has been passed-we would try them for that. 10