Chapter 33 Chapter 5 The Foundation of the Archipelago-1

There used to be a city in the Far East of our country, which had a name that was quite loyal to the emperor-Prince City.The Revolution renamed it Liberty City.The original inhabitants of the city - the Amur Cossacks - were dispersed and turned into a ghost city.Someone needs to live in it.So new residents came in: prisoners and their Cheka guards.The whole city was turned into a labor camp (Bearague). Therefore, symbols are naturally generated from life. The labor camps cannot be considered merely a "dark side" of post-revolutionary life in our country.Their size makes them not a "face", not a "side", but almost the liver of everything happening.Rarely in the last fifty years of our country have we shown ourselves so thoroughly and vividly as in this respect.

Just as any point is formed by the intersection of at least two lines, and any event is formed by at least two necessities, economic necessity is one aspect of the reason we are moving towards the labor camp system; but if only this one Factors may also lead us to the "labor army", but it happens to intersect with the theoretical basis of labor camps that has fortunately formed. Once the two intersect, they grow together; like swinging a tenon into a groove, like a convex into a concave.The result was the archipelago. The expression of economic needs has always been open and greedy; a country determined to become strong in the short term (three-quarters of the matter lies in the deadline, just like in the Baibo Canal project!) needs no foreign aid. Workforce with:

A. Extremely cheap, and preferably free; B. Those who have no requirements in life, those who can be transferred from one place to another on any day, those who are not involved in the family, do not require a pre-arranged residence, do not require schools, hospitals, and are connected within a period of time Neither the kitchen nor the bathroom are required. To obtain such labor, the only way is to swallow one's own son. If the theoretical basis had not begun as early as the last century, I am afraid that it may not have been formed with such certainty in these hectic years.Engels added that the emergence of human beings is not with the generation of moral consciousness, nor with the formation of thinking, but with accidental and meaningless labor: the monkey picked up a stone-everything began .And Marx, when referring to the more recent period (the Critique of the Gotha Programme), declared with equal confidence that the criminal (of course he meant the criminal; it never occurred to him that his pupils would take Political prisoners as criminals) the only means of rehabilitation - still not solitary thinking, not moral self-examination, not repentance, not sorrow (these all belong to the superstructure!), but productive labor.He himself never picked up a pickaxe in his life, never pushed a wheelbarrow in his death, never picked coal, never felled wood, we don't know how he chops wood,--but he wrote all these on paper on, but the paper did not show any resistance.

For his disciples, however, everything now made sense: forcing a prisoner to work every day (sometimes fourteen hours a day, as on the Kolyma work surface) was humane and would lead to his reformation.Confining his confinement to prison cells, small courtyards, and vegetable gardens, instead, offering him the opportunity to read, write, think, and argue during those years—meaning "treat the prisoner like an animal." (Quoted from the "Criticism" mentioned above). It is true that in the hectic period after the October Revolution, this subtle truth was ignored, and it was considered more humane to simply shoot.Those who were not shot were put into the earliest concentration camps, not to reform their past, but to make them incapable of doing harm, for simple isolation.

The reason is that some scholars such as Peter Stuchka stayed there to study the theory of criminal law. They gave a new definition to the concept of punishment in the 1919 "Guiding Principles of Soviet Russian Criminal Law".It puts forward a refreshing assertion that the punishment is neither retribution (the worker-peasant state does not retaliate against criminals) nor atonement (there can be no personal sin, only class causality), but protection. The defense measures of the social system, that is, social defense measures. Once it is recognized as a "social defense measure", it is self-evident that it must be acted in the manner of war.Either by shooting ("maximum measure of social security"), or in prison.But in doing so, the idea of ​​"rehabilitating oneself" seems to have dimmed a bit, despite the fact that the party's Eighth Congress put forward such a call in the same 1919, and the main thing is that it is unclear: if there is no crime, What should be corrected?The causal relationship between classes cannot be corrected, right?

By this time the Civil War was over.In 1922, the first batch of Soviet codes were enacted, in 1923 the "Congress of Punishment of Labor Workers" was held, and in 1924 a new "Basic Principles of Criminal Legislation" was drawn up--it became a The basis of the new Penal Code of 1926 (which hung around our necks for a full thirty-five years)--and that newly discovered notion that there is neither "crime" nor "punishment," Only "social danger" and "social security" remained. Of course this is more convenient.This theory allows anyone to be taken hostage, arrested as a "suspicious element" (Lenin's telegram to Yevgenia Bosh), and even entire peoples to be exiled on the grounds of their danger (such examples are known).But you'd have to be a top-notch acrobat to do it while still creating and maintaining a glossy theory of rehabilitation.

However, there were acrobats, there were theories, and the labor camps themselves were literally renamed...reformation camps.We can even cite a plethora of statements: Vyshinsky: "The entire criminal policy of the Soviets is based on a dialectical (!) combination of the principles of repression and coercion and of persuasion and re-education." Ways to annoy criminals (you know, they want to "reform" them)." "Unlike bourgeois punishment, in our case, making prisoners suffer is not an end, but a means. (It does not seem to be an end in their case, It is also a means.--Author's note). Our goal is to truly reform, to make people who come out of the labor camps into conscious laborers."

have you understood?Although forced, we are transforming them (through pain, too!) -- we just don't know what needs to be reformed. But immediately on the next page we find: "Reform through labor camps use revolutionary violence to limit criminals in the old society and make them unable to do harm." (Always say "of the old society"! By 1952 they will still say "of the old society". All bad things are blamed on wolves Well, blame all the faults on the old society!) So no more words to say about the makeover?Are we merely confining them and making them incapable of harm?

Yes, in the same (1934) year he also mentioned: "The two-in-one mission of repression and the education of all who can be educated." can be educated.This shows that transformation is not for all. This off-the-shelf expression, which I don't know where it came from, has been flying all over the pens of those second-class authors since then: "Molecules that can be reformed by reforming", "molecules that can be reformed by reforming". But what about those that cannot be reformed?Throw it into a mass grave?Throw on the "moon"? (Kolyma) thrown under the Schmidt channel"? (Norilsk)

From the standpoint of 1934, Vyshinsky's jurists blamed even the 1924 "Reform through Labor Code", saying that it had "the erroneous point of view that only talks about reform."Because this code does not mention eradication at all. No one has ever made a wish that the "Fifty-eight Articles" will be reformed. I have therefore titled this part of the book "The Elimination of Labor...", as we all know it. If the statements of the jurists do not match each other, please call Stuchka out of the grave and Vyshinsky, and let them figure it out for themselves.It's not my fault.

It's only now when I sit down to write a book that I decide to look at the great books of the old-timers, and with the help of well-meaning people, because you can't get them anywhere.In our dirty and tattered labor camp uniforms, we never dreamed that such books existed.As for the fact that our whole life is not determined by the will of the battalion commander's citizens, but by some kind of legendary prisoner labor code--this is not only a vague rumor for us people, it is the so-called "lodge gossip", but also Even working alone, Major, would never believe it.These books were internal publications for work and never remained in private hands.Whether they are kept in the safes of the Gulag today or have been burned as dangerous works - no one knows.No excerpts from it were posted on the walls of the "Corner of Culture and Education", and no figures were announced from the wooden pulpit.Where does it say how many hours a day you should work?How many days off should there be in a month?Is there any labor remuneration?What are the rules for disability?Forget it, even your mates will laugh if you ask these questions. Those who know and read these humane words are our diplomats.They've probably shaken this little book around at international conferences.of course!Lo and behold, I've just got a little excerpt and I'm already tearing up: -- Guiding Principles of 1919: Since punishment is not revenge, it should not be of any sadistic character; --1920: Prohibition of using the word "you" to address prisoners. (But, please forgive my wording, but... Can you say "X your mouth" according to the regulations?); --Article 49 of the 1924 Labor Reform Code: "The supervision system must exclude any phenomenon of ill-treatment, absolutely prohibited: handcuffs, confinement cells (!), strict solitary confinement, deprivation of food, meeting relatives through iron bars. " OK, that's enough.There is no need to write other instructions: these are enough for diplomats, but not for the gulag. In the Criminal Code of 1926, there was an Article 9, which I came across by chance and memorized: "Social protection measures should not have the aim of causing physical pain or humiliation and should not be tasked with vengeance and punishment." How clearly said!I usually like to twist the chiefs within the legal scope, and often read this article to them, but our protectors can only widen their eyes in surprise and anger.Some of them are old guys who have been working for twenty years, going to get a pension, and have never heard of Title IX,? Actually, they don't even have the code in their hands. Oh, "a sensible, visionary, humane governing body from beginning to end"!After visiting the Gulag, New York State Supreme Court Judge Leibovitz wrote in "Life" magazine: "Prisoners maintain a sense of personal dignity while serving their sentences."--This is his understanding and experience. Oh, how blessed is the State of New York to have such an all-seeing jackass as judge! You well-fed, self-satisfied, short-sighted, irresponsible foreigners with notebooks and ballpoint pens!How much damage has been done to us by your vanity of wanting to show off your understanding of things you don't understand, from the early days of those journalists who questioned the prisoners in front of the camp prefects in Combe City! Human dignity!who?Is it the one who was convicted without going to court?Is that the guy who was forced to sit on his ass in the mud at the train station?Is it the one who picks up the piss-soaked dirt with his fingers and lifts it away from solitary confinement amid the whistling of the watchman's whip?Is it those well-bred women who, as a great honor, have obtained the qualifications to wash clothes and feed pigs for the elder citizens of the labor camp?Just a tap and a drunken gesture and they had to put themselves at the mercy of others lest they be sent to die in general labor the next day.Is this their dignity? ……fire Fire!Branches crackled, and a fan stirred the flames of campfires in the late autumn night.The camp was dark, and I was alone by the fire, and I could fetch some carpenter's wood for the fire.This camp area is given preferential treatment, and the preferential treatment seems to be similar to that of me outside.This is a "paradise island", a marfino "salaska" of the most privileged period.No one watched me, no one told me to go back to my cell, no one drove me away from the campfire.I wrapped myself tightly in a cotton vest, it was quite cold after all under the strong autumn wind. But she——had been standing in the strong wind for several hours, with her hands upright, her head bowed, sobbing for a while, and standing silently for a while.Sometimes I begged bitterly: "Citizen Chief! ... Please forgive me! ... Please forgive me, I dare not again ..." The wind brought her moans to my ears, as if she was moaning right next to my ears.The chief citizen is lighting the stove in the guard room and ignores him. This is the guard room of the labor camp next to us. The prisoners in that camp come to our side every day to lay water pipes and repair a dilapidated seminary building.There are several dense barbed wire fences between the two camps. Only a few steps away from the guard room, under the bright street lamps, stands a punished girl with her head bowed, her gray working skirt ripped by the cold wind. , blowing on her bare legs and head covered only by a thin turban.During the day when they were digging trenches at our place, the weather was still warm.There was a girl who slipped down a ravine, climbed over to the Vladikino road, and escaped—the guards were clumsy, and the Moscow city buses ran on the road.When this incident was discovered, it was no longer possible to catch her.The alarm was raised, and a vicious black-faced major came, yelling and announcing that if the female fugitive could not be found, the entire labor camp would be punished without seeing relatives and receiving food parcels for a month.The female homework monitors were also aggressive and yelling.One of them, in particular, rolled his eyes viciously and said: "Catch the damned girl! Let them use the scissors—click! click!—to shave her head before the team!" (This is not her That's how women were punished in the Gulag.) But the girl sighed and said, "It would be nice if we could let her hang out for us!" The guards heard it—and she was punished: all When they were brought back to the camp, she was left to "stand at attention" in front of the guard room.It was six o'clock in the afternoon, and it was already eleven o'clock at night.She wanted to stomp her feet to warm up, but the guard on duty stretched out her head and shouted: "Stand at attention, damn X..., be careful of being beaten!" Now she didn't move, just cried: "Forgive me, Chief Citizen!--let me into the camp, I dare not!  …" But even in the camp no one would say to her: Saints!Come in! The reason why I didn't let her go for so long was because tomorrow was Sunday and she didn't need to go to work. She was a fair-haired, silly, uneducated little girl.For a group of what axis was locked in.Little sister, what a dangerous thought you have uttered!They want you to remember this lesson for the rest of your life. fire Fire! ... When we fought, we gazed at the fire and imagined what kind of victory would come... The wind blew from the fire the sparkling seedpods that hadn't burnt out. I promise fire and you, girl: the whole world will read this. This happened at the end of 1947, a few days before the thirtieth anniversary of the October coup.The place is our capital, Moscow, which has just celebrated the 800th anniversary of its own brutality.It is two kilometers away from the Quansu Agricultural Exhibition Hall.The Ostankino Serf Arts and Crafts Museum is less than one kilometer away. serf! ... It is no accident that many people [batch] have this metaphor involuntarily in their minds when they need to think about it.Serfdom and the archipelago were alike, not in individual features, but in the fundamental meaning of their existence: they were both forms of social organization that exploited the unpaid labor of millions of slaves in a coercive and ruthless manner.The natives of the archipelago go out six days, and often seven days a week, to perform servitude which tires them out and brings them no personal gain.Neither one day out of five nor one day out of seven was set aside for their own private work, for their livelihood was sustained by "monthly rations"--this was the camp ration. They It also happens to be divided into labor serfs (Group A) and domestic slaves (Group B) who directly serve the landlords (reform through labor) and territories (camps). Recognized as sick serfs (group C). Penalties for wrongdoers (group D) also exist, with this difference: the landowner, for his own benefit, imposes punishment with less loss of working days-- It was limited to whipping in the stables. He did not have a confinement room, but the head of the labor camp followed the detailed rules stipulated by the state and put the guilty in a disciplinary isolation room or a strict control work shed. Like the landowner, the camp master could have any slave as his houseservant, cook, barber, or clown (or, if he pleased, a troupe of serfs), and any female slave as his housekeeper, concubine, or clown. maid.Like a landlord, he can mess around and do whatever he wants. (Major Volkov, the battalion commander of the Khimki labor camp, saw a prisoner girl drying and washing her long flaxen hair in the sun in the sun, and for some reason, his heart became angry, and he briefly ordered: "Shave it off! "So the girl had her head shaved immediately. 1945.) Regardless of whether it is a landlord or a labor camp commander, when the master changes, all the slaves wait obediently for the new master, guessing about him habits, and surrendered beforehand to his power.Due to the inability to predict the master's will, serfs seldom think about their own tomorrow--the same is true for prisoners.Serfs cannot marry wives with the master's permission--prisoners can only have wives in labor camps under the care of the chief.Just as the fate of the slave was not chosen by the serf himself, and therefore he cannot be blamed for his birth, so the fate of the prisoner was not chosen by him, and his landing in the archipelago was also due to pure destiny. The Russian language has long recognized this similarity: "Have people been fed?" "Have people been sent to work?" "How many people do you have?" "Send me someone!" People, people -- Who is this talking about?This was once said about the serfs.Now the inmates are saying the same thing.But the same cannot be said about officers, about leaders—"How many people do you have?", no one will understand. But some people will retort that the similarities with serfs are not many after all.There are more differences. We agree: more of a difference.But the strange thing is that all the differences point to the advantages of serfdom, and all the differences point to the disadvantages of the Gulag Islands! Serfs worked no more than from sunrise to sunset.The Prisoner - It starts in the dark and ends in the dark (and it doesn't necessarily end).Serf Sundays were holy, as well as the Orthodox Twelve, the local teaching festivals, and the days between Christmas and Epiphany (they were going around in disguise!).The prisoner mutters before every Sunday: Will it be given or not?He doesn't know what holidays are (just as there are no public holidays on the Volga): the pain of searches and special measures brought about by these May 1st and November 7th outweigh the benefits of the festival itself (and some people return every year. a year in solitary confinement exactly on these days).Christmas and Easter were real holidays for the serfs; they had absolutely no idea of ​​body searches after work, early morning and midnight ("Stand by the shop!").The serfs lived in a fixed farmhouse and considered it their own.When it was dark and I went to sleep—on the kang on the stove top, on the high plank bed on the stove top, or on the bench—I knew: this place was mine, I slept here before, and I still sleep here in the future.The prisoner does not know which work shed he will be in tomorrow (even on the way back from work, he is not sure if he is still sleeping there today).He does not have "his own" board shop, "his own little carriage".It doesn't matter where people rush to. Some serfs in the labor land lease system had their own horses, wooden plows, axes, sickles, spindles, bark baskets, dishes, and clothes.Even the domestic serfs, according to Herzen, always had a few spare pieces of clothing which they could leave as inheritances to close ones, which were never confiscated by the landowners.Prisoners, on the other hand, had to return their winter clothes in spring and their summer clothes in autumn.During the inventory, his rucksack was shaken clean, and every extra piece of clothing was confiscated and returned to the public.He is not allowed to possess a small knife or a rice bowl, and only lice are allowed in living animals.Serfs can always find time to put a fish basket and catch a few small fish.Prisoners can only use a spoon to fish fish from the market.A serf either had a heifer called "Bryonushka," or a ewe, and some hens.The prisoner never had a drop of milk on his lips, and he hadn't seen an egg for decades, and he probably didn't know what it was when he saw it. Russia had experienced seven centuries of Asiatic slavery, but for the most part had no idea what hunger was. "In Russia no one dies of starvation!" - so says a proverb.And proverbs are not made up.A serf is a slave, but his stomach is full.But the archipelago has been living under the oppression of brutal hunger for decades.For a small fresh fish tail picked up from the trash can, the prisoners could fight among themselves.At Christmas and Easter, even the most useless peasants and peasants can break their fast with pork.But the top laborers in the camps could only get bacon sent from home. Serfs live together as a family.To separate a serf by selling or bartering him was recognized and proclaimed barbarism.Russian popular literature has always expressed indignation at this.There were hundreds if not thousands (probably not!) of serfs who were separated from their families.But by no means millions.A prisoner leaves his family from the first day of his arrest, and half the time he never returns.If the son is arrested with the father (as we hear from Witkowski) or the wife with the husband, it is of the utmost importance that they are not allowed to meet in the same camp; - Separate them ASAP!The same is true for those male and female prisoners who had a short-lived or real love in the labor camp and met. They were quickly punished with confinement cells, separated and sent to different places.Not even our most sympathetic writer ladies, like Saginamia or Daisy, shed a silent tear on a little handkerchief for this. (This is because they don't know. Or think -- it's necessary.) The transfer of the serfs from one place to another was not in a hurry: they were allowed to take care of their households, collect their chattels, and then move safely in carts for fifteen or forty versts.But the release of the labor camp hit the prisoner like a storm: just to return the things to the labor camp, he was given twenty-seven minutes, ten minutes, and then his whole life would be turned upside down and transported. Wherever you go to the ends of the earth, you may never return.A serf rarely encountered more than one migration in his life, and often settled in the same place.And you can't find a native archipelago who hasn't experienced deportation.Many people have migrated five times, seven times, and eleven times. Some serfs can break free and pay rent in lieu. They can move far away to places beyond the reach of the hateful master's whip, do business, get rich, and live like free people.But even the prisoners who were released from custody still lived in the camp, and had to drag their feet early in the morning to the place where the escort team drove the brigade to work. Most of the house slaves are vile and shameless parasites ("house servants are a bastard") who are fed by the labor serfs, but at least they do not control the labor serfs themselves.What makes the prisoners feel doubly disgusting is that they are also subject to the jurisdiction and arbitrary command of the despicable and shameless servants. And on the whole, one factor that made the whole situation of the serfs easier was that the landlord had to cherish them: they were valuable, and could bring him wealth by their labor.The chief of the labor camp has no sympathy for the prisoners; he didn't buy them with money, and he can't leave them as an inheritance to his children. If one batch dies, another batch will be sent in. No, we should not compare our prisoners with the serfs of the landlords.It should be admitted that the situation of those people is much more stable and humane.The situation of the natives of the archipelago can be roughly compared with who?It can be roughly compared with the factory serfs in the Urals, Altai, and Khalchensk.Or compare with the inhabitants of the military village of Arakcheyev. (Some people even disagree with this: it is too beautiful. In Arakcheyev's military village there is nature, family, festivals. Only the slavery of the ancient East is an apt metaphor.) Of the convicts' superiority over the serfs, only one thing can come to mind, and only one thing: the convict, even though he was a juvenile delinquent of twelve or fifteen years of age, had not been on the islands since his birth.After all, he had been free for a few years before going to prison!As for the superiority of a fixed-term sentence by the court over a life-long slave, there must be many provisos: if the sentence is not a quarter of a century--twenty-five years; if the article is not Article 58; if there is no " Waiting for special instructions"; if there is no longer a second sentence of imprisonment; if the prison is not automatically deported to the place of exile after the sentence is completed; if it is not to become a "second entry palace", it will be captured from the outside and brought back to the archipelago immediately.There are as many strings attached as stakes on a fence.We cannot help recalling that the gentlemen of the past sometimes granted their serfs complete liberty out of a momentary pleasure. For the above reasons, when "Emperor Mikhail" told us in Lubinka a joke circulating among the Moscow workers: (CPU [B]) means "Second Serfdom of the Bolsheviks", We don't find it funny, but we find it deeply prophetic. The communists had found new incentives for social labour.At first thought it would be self-serving self-awareness and drive.That's why they eagerly grasped the "great initiative" of Saturday voluntary labor.But in fact it is not the beginning of a new century, but the spasm of self-sacrifice of the last generation of the revolution.It can be seen from the materials of Tambov province in 1921 that at that time many party members tried to avoid compulsory Saturday labor, so they had to implement the practice of recording their participation in compulsory labor on the party registration card.This passion lasted for another ten years, and it still worked for the members of the Communist Youth League and us—the Young Pioneers at that time.But then it disappeared among us too. What's the next step?Where to find incentives?Money, piecework, bonuses?But these things exude the pungent smell of capitalism not so long ago, and it will take a long time until another generation appears before this smell will stop being uncomfortable and become a "material benefit of socialism" Principles" are accepted with peace of mind. He dug out the bottom of the big wooden box of history and pulled out what Marx called "super-economic coercion".This precious find bared its long fangs unabashedly in labor camps and collective farms. Then came a Frenkel.Like the devil spilling ecstasy into a boiling pot, he poured it into something called a "grading stove." Everyone knows a mantra that has been recited countless times: "No matter the stick discipline that serfdom relied on in the past, or the hunger discipline that capitalism relies on today, there is no room for existence in the new social system." But you see, "Islands" has achieved a clever combination of the two. There are only three ways to do this: 1.Classification stove; 2 homework classes; 3.Two management teams. (But a third management team is never needed. In Vorkuta, for example, there was never one, and things went on just fine.) The archipelago sits on the backs of these three whales. If they are "transmission belts", the islands are being rotated by them. The "grading stove" has already been said before.This is a redistribution method of bread and food, the purpose of which is to force the prisoners in our country to work hard and break their waists to get the average ration he deserves, and this average ration is only equivalent to that given to prisoners who do nothing in a parasitic society. quantity.If prisoners in our country want to meet their own legal ration standards, they can only receive a 100-gram piece of reward bread, and must be considered an assaulter.If the completion of the task exceeds 100%, he can also get a few more spoonfuls of gruel (withheld from his mouth).What a merciless study of human nature!These morsels of bread, these patties of coarse grain, are nothing compared to the physical exertion of earning them.But human beings, by their eternally catastrophic nature, are not good at weighing things against their costs.Just as a glass of cheap euteca can send a soldier fighting for someone else to charge and die, so a convict will slip off a log and soak in the flood season of a northern river for this meager alms, or When taking off the adobe, I soaked the mud in the ice water with bare feet.His two feet will no longer be needed to walk on "free" land.