Chapter 34 2

However, this "graded stove" invented by Satan is not omnipotent.Not everyone is willing to take the bait.Just as the serfs once realized the truth of "I would rather not have enough to eat than to be tired and broken", the prisoners also understood: in the labor camps, it is not the low rations but the high rations that kill people.Lazy!Fool!Insensitive semi-animals!They don't want extra food!They don't want this little piece of nutritious bread made of potatoes, arrowroot peas, and water!They don't even want early release!They don't even want to be on the honor roll!They don't want to stand at the height of the whole project and the interests of the whole country, and they don't want to complete the five-year plan, even though the five-year plan is in the interests of the working people!They hid in hidden corners of mines, and loafed on the floors of construction sites.They are happy to shelter from the rain in a black hole, as long as they can not work.

Such a large-scale labor scene as the gravel field on the outskirts of Yaroslavl is not often arranged: hundreds of prisoners can be seen by the guards with the naked eye concentrated in a small area. It will be found out in no time.This is an ideal condition: as long as the flag on the top of the mountain does not fall, and no signal to rest is issued, no one dares to slow down, straighten their waists, and wipe off their sweat.But what about other occasions? thought about it.Came up with a "homework class".How can we not think of its family?In our country, even the Narodniks want to enter socialism through the village commune, while the Marxists want to enter socialism through the collective.Our newspapers still write like this until today-"For a person, the most important thing is labor, and it must be labor in a collective"!

In the labor camps it happens that there is nothing but labor, and it is entirely in the collective!Are not labor camps, then, the highest goal of mankind?Isn't the most important thing already obtained? How homework classes serve the psychological enrichment, mutual promotion, mutual supervision, and enhancement of dignity of their members - we have already had an opportunity to explain these (Chapter 3).According to the different purposes of forming work teams, it is also necessary to select suitable production tasks and team leaders (the incision in labor camps is called "pimple").The squad leader must be able to use sticks and rations to drive the prisoners to work without the presence of the chief, guards, and escort team, and lead the work squad up.Shalamov gave some examples. During a gold rush season in Kolyma, all members of an operation team died for several rounds, but the operation team leader remained the same.In the Kemerov labor camp there was such a squad leader named Berelomov.He never moved his mouth, and only gave orders with the stick that was used as "self-control".The surnames of such persons could fill many pages of this book, but I have not cataloged it.Interestingly, most of the monitors in this category come from thieves, no, they come from the lumpen proletariat.

However, what things people can't adapt to?If we fail to see that homework classes sometimes become a natural cell of aboriginal society, just like families outside prisons, it would be a gross neglect of ours.I have seen such homework classes myself, and more than one.It is true that this is not a so-called "general labor" work class. In such a work class, some people must die, otherwise the rest will not survive.I'm talking basically professional classes; electricians, turners, carpenters, painters.The smaller the number of these work teams (ten to twelve people), the more obvious the spirit of mutual protection and mutual support will be.

In order to lead such a homework class and play such a role, it is necessary to have an appropriate class leader, moderately cruel, familiar with all the moral (immoral) codes of the Gulag, sharp-eyed, fair in the class, and have a set of drills for dealing with superiors. The only way to get it done--some are cursing in a hoarse voice, some are sneaking around to make trouble; to make all the handymen fear you three points, and never let go of fighting for an extra 100 grams of bread, a pair of cotton trousers, and a pair of Boots Chance.But you also need to build a good relationship with powerful handymen, and you can inquire about news and trends in the labor camp from them.All this is necessary for him to exercise proper leadership.He must have a good knowledge of the projects and the favorable and unfavorable sections (and be good at squeezing the adjoining shift - if it exists - into the unfavorable section).You must have a keen eye for opportunities to engage in "Tukheta" (falsification) -- you can figure out which aspect is easy to engage in during these five days, whether it is in the quota or in the number of completions.When the construction site director has picked up a leaky fountain pen and wants to mark "disqualified" in the work report, he must be able to unswervingly defend the false figures.We must be good at sending "oil and water" to the quota staff.Know who's the eyeliner in his homework class (if he's not overly smart and harmful, let him go on, otherwise put a lesser one in his place).But in the homework class, he always knows who to give encouragement with his eyes, who to scold a few words, who to assign today's work should be lighter.Such a work squad with such a work squad leader can always get along with it and survive it.There is no warmth, but no one will fall down.I worked under some of these class leaders - Sinebryakov, Pavel Poronyuk.If a list of such people were compiled, it would occupy many pages.According to the many introductions I have heard, the common point is that most of the smart homework monitors who can do things are the sons of "rich peasants".

What can be done?If someone insists on imposing homework classes on you as a form of survival, what can you do?Gotta get used to it, right?Labor kills us, but it is only through labor that we are not killed. (Of course, this is a philosophy that can be debated. Maybe this is the more correct answer: Instead of you teaching me to die the way you want, let me die the way I want. The problem is that people will not let you... ...). The work team leader sometimes faced difficult choices: the logging work team could not complete the daily task of fifty-five square meters, and the team leader had to go to confinement.If you don't want to stay in confinement, you have to order the class members to death.Whichever side is stronger, you have to kowtow to that side.

Two management teams are as useful to a labor camp as two jaws are to an iron tongs.The two teams are like hammers and drills. They forge prisoners into things that the country needs, and once they are smashed, they are swept into the garbage dump.Although maintaining a separate management team for the camps (that is, the labor camps themselves) greatly increased the expenditure of the state, although it often obstructed and interfered with the progress of production and construction due to stupidity, capriciousness and "vigilance", it still did not work. It can be seen that they did not think it was a mistake.Set up two management teams - that is, turn one tormentor into two, alternating their actions and competing with each other to see who can squeeze more out of one prisoner and give him less.

A team holds production, materials, tools, and transportation in their hands, and only lacks one insignificant thing-labor force.This labor force was brought out of the labor camp every morning by the convoy team and brought back to the camp every night (or in two shifts).During the ten or twelve hours that the prisoners were in the hands of the production team, there was no need for them to be educated and reformed.Even if they died during the working day, neither management team would have cared: it was easier to be reimbursed for dead people than for boards burned or linseed oil stolen.For the production team, it is important to force the prisoners to work more in a day and to record less for them in the daily work list.For fatal overruns and shortages in production always find a way to make up for it: you know, the trust, the building supplies bureau, the site superintendent, the foreman, the general clerk, the motorist all steal.The prisoners stole the least, and not for themselves (where could they get it?), but for the battalion chiefs and escorts.Greater losses are caused by careless and ill-considered management.In addition, the convicts do not care about everything and cause losses.There is only one way to make up all these shortfalls--underpay labor.

The camp management has only labor" (a masterpiece of abbreviations!), but this is the decisive factor. This is what the camp chiefs say: we can choke them (the production management), and they go elsewhere. No workers can be found. (In the taiga forest, in the desert, where can they be found?) Because of this, they desperately want to use their labor to make more money. Of course, the money is also handed over to the national treasury, but part of it is kept as the base camp Administrative expenses, as a reward for the camp leaders for providing guards (to prevent freedom), food and clothing, and mental torture for prisoners.

As is always the case in our well-conceived social institutions, here, too, two plans clashed: a production plan that demanded a minimum wage expenditure, and a production plan that demanded maximum wages from the production units for the labor camps. Income of the Ministry of Internal Affairs program.Onlookers will wonder: why make your own plans conflict?Oh, there's a lot to read here!Once the two plans conflict, they can crush the villains caught in the middle.The validity of this principle extends far beyond the barbed wire of the archipelago. It is also important to note that the two groups were not at all hostile to each other, as you might suppose from their constant quarrels and mutual deceit.Where things need to be squashed more flat, they are very close to each other.Although the camp commander is the biological father of all the prisoners, he will always readily agree and sign a document certifying that the prisoners themselves are responsible for their mutilation and have nothing to do with the production unit; Suggest that there is no ventilation in a certain workshop. (If there is no, there is no way. Is there any way? Is it a temporary difficulty? How did you get over the Leningrad siege?...) The management authorities of the labor camps will never refuse to send the supervisors who have a bad attitude to work in accordance with the requirements of the production management authorities. , Workers who lost their shovels, or engineers who failed to carry out orders were put in the brig.Don't these two members of the management team constitute the upper class of the local "taiga forest industrial landowners" in the remote new village?Isn't it their wives who visit each other?

If false reports continue to be included in the daily work report, if it is written in the daily report that some trenches that have never been opened on the ground have been excavated and backfilled; A full-fledged column that lasts ten years--then it wasn't even the instigation of the unscrupulous money-making camp administration, but the prisoners (work squad leaders, quorum workers, foremen) We) did it ourselves, because that's what all national quotas are; they are not for real life on Earth, but for ideals on the moon.A dedicated, healthy, well-fed, energetic person cannot meet these quotas!What more could be asked of a tortured, debilitated, starved and oppressed prisoner?Productivity dictated by national quotas is impossible on earth, a bit like socialist realism in literature at this point.However, if the books that cannot be sold can be simply shredded to make paper afterwards, it is more complicated to cover up false reports in industrial production.But it's not impossible! Managers and site supervisors are often too busy running around to notice and miss the falsification.The foreman hired from the free people is either ignorant of bullshit or drunk or kind to the prisoners (of course the picture is that the foreman will help them when they encounter difficulties).Furthermore--"the excess prize has been eaten", the bread can't be taken out of the stomach.Accountants are notoriously clumsy in their audits and calculations, and it will be months or years before they discover the falsification, by which time the money paid for the project has long since disappeared, and the only way left is to hire freelancers. Somebody in the process will be pulled out to the court for trial, or it will be settled secretly, and the account will be written off. The high-level leaders erected three pillars under the archipelago: "grading stoves", work teams, and two management teams.And the fourth pillar, which is the main one—falsification is erected by the natives and by life itself. To engage in deceit requires a courageous and methodical work squad leader, but what is more needed and more important is a production leader appointed from among the prisoners.Foremen, ration men, planners, economists, there are not a few of this kind, because there are not so many freelancers in those distant places.Some of the prisoners got carried away in these positions and became more cruel than the free men, trampling their fellow prisoners and trampling over dead bodies towards their own early release.Others, on the contrary, maintained a clear sense of their archipelagic homeland, introduced reasonable moderation in the management of production, and reasonable falsification in production reports.They do so at a risk: the risk is not in getting a new sentence, because the sentence around their neck is already decent enough and the terms strong enough, but in losing their job, pissing off their bosses, and deportation to something worse , perishing silently there.But they still help their brethren to survive, thus showing their perseverance and the brilliance of wisdom. Vasily Grigorievich Vlasov, for example, is such a person.We already know him when it comes to the Card trial.Throughout his lengthy prison sentence (he spent nineteen years in a row), he maintained the same stubbornness and self-assurance that fueled his behavior in court, his mockery of Kalinin and his pardon .All these years, even when he was starving and emaciated, languishing in "ordinary labour," he never felt himself a pardoning lamb, but a real political prisoner, even as he Confidentially talk about what is said in the heart, thinking that he is a "revolutionary".His natural management skills more than compensated for his incomplete economics degree.When he used this talent to serve as a production handyman of various kinds, he was not simply seeking to stave off his own demise, but was also looking for an opportunity to fix up the whole cart so that his comrades could pull with less effort. In the 1940s, at a forest dispatch point in Ustvim (the management system of the Ustvim labor camp is different from the general ones in that it has only one management team: the labor camp does its own logging, statistics and Ministry of Forest Industry), Vlasov held two positions of quorum officer and planner.He was a "big guy" there.In winter, in order to give some support to those hard-working loggers, he always recorded a few more cubic meters of output for their work teams.There was a particularly harsh winter, and the guys worked hard to complete 60% of the tasks, but they were paid according to the standard of 125%.They relied on the increased ration grain to survive the winter and ensured that their work would not stop for a day.However, the "downed" (on paper) timber was delayed, and some unpleasant rumors reached the ears of the labor camp commander.In March, he sent a survey team of foremen into the forest, and they found a shortage of 8,000 square meters of timber!The battalion commander, maddened, called Vlasov.After listening to Vlasov, he said: "Chief, let's put these guys in confinement for five days each. They are all on errands. They don't bother to go into the forest because the snow is deep there. Please organize a new investigation team, I Be the team leader." Vlasov and his sensible three-person team compiled a survey report and "found" all the missing wood without leaving the office.The battalion commander was relieved for a while, but in May, he was caught blind again: there were obviously very few timbers shipped out, and the higher-ups were already asking.He sent for Vlasov.The little Vlasov, who usually looked like a pugnacious rooster, didn't even deny that the wood didn't exist. "Then how can you make a false report, what the hell?!" "Why, do you want to go to jail yourself? You know, eight thousand square meters-this is a ten-yuan note for a freelance employee, and for a contract Five years for card personnel," the battalion commander cursed, but it was too late to punish Vlasov; everything depended on him. "Then what should I do?" "Wait until all the roads have been melted." All the roads have been melted, and the roads in winter cannot be walked, and the roads in summer are still impassable.At this time Vlasov sent an impeccable and detailed report, which was signed by the battalion commander and sent up to the Bureau.According to the report, due to the excellent logging performance last winter, 8,000 square meters of timber will not be able to be transported by sled road in the future.And now it is impossible to haul through the swampy woodlands.Then estimated the expenditure required for laying the wooden raft road, and proved that the cost of transporting the 8,000 square meters now exceeds their own value.And a year later the log, which had been soaked in the swamp for a summer and an autumn, was no longer eligible for delivery, and the orderer would accept it as firewood, the Authority agreed with this informed argument.Besides, this kind of argument can be presented to any investigation team sent by other parties.So the eight thousand square meters were written off. That's how the trees are brought down, eaten and washed away, and then stand proudly and verdant again.However, the price paid by the state for these non-existent wooden squares is also extremely limited: it is just a few hundred pieces of sticky, wet-stained black bread.The thousands of trees and hundreds of human lives that have been preserved are not included in the income, because such property is never kept in the archipelago. Vlasov must not be the only one who is good at cheating, so from 1947 all logging camps have implemented a new system: the establishment of integrated teams and integrated work teams.Now the loggers and transporters are combined into one team.The output of the work team is not calculated by the felled logs, but by the timber transported to the river bank slide and transported to the spring flow field. The results of it?Are you playing tricks now?not necessarily!It's even more prevalent!It was forced to expand its scope, and the number of workers who depended on it grew larger and larger.If readers are not bothered, please take a deep look with us: 1.From below the river slide, the prisoners are not allowed to follow the timber (who will escort it on the river? Be vigilant!), so the representatives of the "Transportation Office" of the free people deliver the goods from the labor camps by the river. People (that is, each work class) receive wood in their hands.This representative must be unselfish, right?not at all.No matter how many logging shifts need to be taken care of, the labor camp deliverers will falsely report how many, and the representatives of the business office will all agree. 2.The reason is here.Distribution offices also need to support their own freelance workers, and their quotas are beyond their capabilities.For all these non-existent falsely reported timber, the delivery business office will still record it in its own account as the actual delivery quantity. 3.Near the main boom where the timber from the various logging streams is gathered, there is a falcon forest farm-the place where the timber is hauled ashore.Again this work is done by prisoners who still belong to the same Ustvim labor camp (the fifty-two islands of the Ustvim labor camp are spread over an area of ​​250X250 kilometers. See how our "archipelago" Sample!).The deliverer at the logistics office knew: now the receiver of the labor camp will take back all the false figures from him; secondly, in order not to sell his own labor camp that was delivered on the slide by the river, And number one, to feed his own haulage convicts with the same falsification! (Their quota is also whimsical, and they also need to get a little more bread!) But the consignee here already needs to sweat a little more for the society: he can't simply accept the wood by volume, but fill the log A list of diameters and lengths, both true and false.The benefactor who gave you food is here! (Vlasov also worked here.) 4.After the skid yard is the lumber yard, which processes the logs into sawn timber.The ones who do the work are the criminals again.The work team lives by the volume of logs processed, and those "surplus" falsely reported wood can just increase their percentage of task completion. 5. The next step is finished product warehouse.According to the country's quota, finished products should account for 65 percent of the logs received by the lumber mill.As a result, 65% of the falsely reported timber also entered the warehouse in vain (this kind of mythical sawn timber is also cataloged by variety: backboard, lumber; board thickness, edge-cut, un-edge-cut... ...).Palletizers also rely on these false reports to earn a little more food. and then?If you falsify and go to the warehouse, you will be the top.Warehouses are guarded by armed guards, and unsupervised "losses" are no longer possible.Now who and how is responsible for the false figures? At this time, another great principle of the archipelago came to help the great principle of deceit: the rubber principle, that is, the principle of drag and drop.False figures are entered in the account, and they are carried forward year after year to the next year.In the wilderness of this archipelago, all those who participated in the counting of supplies were their own people, and everyone knew it.You can't go and flip every board by hand just to count.Fortunately some of the misreported numbers are written off under inventory "shrinkage" each year.The big deal is to remove one or two warehouse directors and transfer them to work as quota staff.But how many people get a bite of food with this hand! They are also working hard in this area: when loading the plates into wagons for the user (the receiver is not present, and the wagons are thrown to various places according to the consignment note), they also include false reports.This means that the loading quantity is recorded more (note that the handling team is also benefited in this way).The railways put lead seals on the wagons, which has nothing to do with them.Some time later, in Armavir or somewhere in Krivoy Rog, someone will open the carriages and put the actual receipts on the account.If the number of underfills is moderate, then all the differences of these wooden squares will be concentrated in one column, and reported to the State Planning Commission to explain the reason.If the amount undershipped is too disgraceful, the consignee will file a claim with Ustvem, but those claims will travel with millions of other documents, filed somewhere, and then After a while it disappeared without a trace.After all, they are no match for the pressure of people's survival. (And no Armavir would return a load of bark lumber to the sender: take what you give. There is no lumber in the South.) We should also point out at this point that both the state and the Ministry of Forest Industries are conscientiously using these exaggerated figures for timber harvesting and processing in their economic reports.They also happened to be of use to the Ministry. But perhaps the most astonishing thing is this: Since the quantities of each stage of timber transshipment are overreported, it seems that there should be insufficient timber.However, the consignees at the skidding yard have already overreported the amount of timber hauled in summer by such a large imaginary number, so that in autumn, the distribution office still has excess timber piled up in front of the floating fence, and they have not moved. .You can't let these logs stay in the river for the winter, or you will have to call an airplane to blow them up in the spring.So the above agreed to put these redundant woods that no one needs into the White Sea downstream in late autumn! God?strange?Wonderful?But this kind of thing doesn't just happen in one place.There is also often excess wood left on the lumber yard in Ongerage.They were not shipped, but they were no longer on the books.For several years after some lumber yards were completely closed, people from nearby labor camps kept coming to find unowned dry wood, and put these peeled pit logs into the furnace to burn.And in order to harvest and make them, I don't know how much painful price I paid. In order to keep the wood from the hands of the free men who released the platoons, the Talaga Labor Camp in Arkhangel State dispatched teams of criminals released from custody to secretly intercept their wooden platoons: Timber harvested in the camps but temporarily in the hands of free men was stolen to the camps.The furniture planned each year is made of... stolen wood. All of these are just for survival, not for money, let alone to rob the country. A country should never be so vicious as this--to force its own citizens to cheat. This is what the prisoners used to say: Canals cannot be built without "Tuheta" (falsification) and Amona (nitrogen explosives) All this is the foundation of the archipelago.