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The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV

Book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 2 quotes · 1974, Gulag, Soviet Russia

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All1974GulagSoviet RussiaCommunismPrison LaborPrison LifeSoviet Union1975For Profit PrisonsHard LaborPrisonPrison CampsStalinismThe AscentThe Soul And Barbed Wire19331934193819451973

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV Quotes

“Oh, without the brigade one could still somehow manage to survive the camp! Without the brigade you are an individual, you yourself choose your own line of conduct. Without the brigade you can at least die proudly, but in the brigade the only way they allow you even to die is in humiliation, on your belly. From the chief, from the camp foreman, from the jailer, from the convoy guard, from all of them you can hide and catch a moment of rest; you can ease up a bit here on hauling, shirk a bit there on lifting. But from the driving belts, from your comrades in the brigade, there is neither a hiding place, nor salvation, nor mercy. You cannot not want to work. You cannot, conscious of being a political [prisoner], prefer death from hunger to work. No! Once you have been marched outside the compound, once you have been registered as going out to work, everything the brigade does today will be divided not by twenty-five but by twenty-six, and because of you the entire brigade's percentage of norm will fall from 123 to 119, which makes the difference between the ration allotted to record breakers and ordinary rations, and everyone will lose a millet cake and three and a half ounces of bread. And that is why your comrades keep watch on you better than any jailers! And the brigade leader's fist will punish you far more effectively than the whole People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Now that is what spontaneous initiative in re-education means! That is psychological enrichment of the personality by the collective!”

CommunismPrison Life19741933Hard LaborThe Archipelago Metastasizes
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
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“The reason why camps proved economically profitable had been foreseen as far back as Thomas More, the great-grandfather of socialism, in his Utopia. The labor of the zeks was needed for degrading and particularly heavy work, which no one, under socialism, would wish to perform. For work in remote and primitive localities where it would not be possible to construct housing, schools, hospitals, and stores for many years to come. For work with pick and spade—in the flowering of the twentieth century. For the erection of the great construction projects of socialism, when the economic means for them did not yet exist.”

Utopia1974Hard LaborPrison LaborFor Profit PrisonsWe Are Building
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
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