Chapter 37 2

This observation may be correct; before the peasants there is no other way but to work, and it is by work that they live, and it is also by work that they lose their lives.And intellectuals sometimes have no other way of defending themselves than being a dying person or even making up a brilliant theory like E. In our glorious fatherland, the most important and courageous writings were never read by their contemporaries, never in time to influence the minds of the people (one because they were forbidden, persecuted, unknown, the other because because educated readers shy away from it).What's so strange about this?I wrote this book out of a pure sense of obligation, because too many narratives and memories have come together in my hands to be extinguished.Can't expect I'll see where it's published with my own eyes, don't really expect people who bring a handful of bones back from the archipelago to read it some day, don't believe it's going to make it clear to people while some things can be corrected The truth of history.At the most tense moment of writing this book, I was shocked by the strongest shock in my life: the dragon suddenly appeared, and licked away a novel and several old works of mine with a blood-red long tongue full of barbs, and temporarily hid In the background. But still hear its breath, know its fangs are aimed at my neck, but the time is not yet. So with a broken heart I try to finish this research as soon as possible, in order to at least save it from the dragon In those days when Sholokhov, who was no longer a writer, was going to receive his Nobel Prize from a country where writers were tortured and arrested, I was doing everything possible to hide from the spies and hide in a hidden place , to buy time to finish this book with my overworked secret pen.

I am going too far, I was going to say that in our country the best books were not known at the time.I am therefore likely to be repeating in vain what another has secretly written.Had I known his writings, I could have kept mine shorter.But at last, during seven pallid years of freedom, something emerged.In the pre-dawn ocean a swimmer saw the head of another swimmer and uttered a hoarse cry to him.In this way, I discovered Shalamov's sixty labor camp novels and his studies of criminal repeat offenders. I would like to state here that, apart from certain local issues, our views on the archipelago have never diverged.Our assessment of Aboriginal life is largely the same.Shalamov's labor camp experience was harder and longer than mine.I admit with respect that he, not I, touched the bottom of that abyss of brutality and despair into which camp life dragged us all.

That doesn't stop me, however, from rebutting him on our points of disagreement.One is the opinion of the health department of the labor camp.Sara Mosa speaks of every facility in the labor camps as abhorrent (quite true!), making only partial exceptions to the Sanitation Section.He supports, if not manufactures, the fantastic talk of a labor camp sanitation section that does good deeds.He asserted that everyone in the camp was against the prisoners and that only doctors could help them. But being able to help is not the same as actually helping.Site director, quota officer, accountant.Custodians, cooks, day workers, dispatch workers, etc. can also help if they are willing.But are there really that many people helping?

Before 1932, the medical department of the labor camp was still under the People's Commissariat of Health, and the doctors at that time might really be doctors.In 1922 the department was completely taken over by the Gulag, and its mission became to help oppress prisoners and act as a gravedigger.Leaving aside the good intentions of individual well-meaning doctors, if the labor camp health department does not serve the common purpose, who will let it stay in the archipelago? A dying man who refuses to go to work is beaten by the supervisor and the supervisor, so that he licks his wounds like a dog, and lies unconscious for two days in a confinement cell (Babbage), after which he cannot get out of his bunk for two months --Isn't it the health department who refused to write a certificate of being beaten and refused to treat him at this time? (The first labor camp of Zhida labor camp.)

Isn't every decision to put a prisoner in solitary confinement signed by the health department?But the fact must not be overlooked that the governors did not require the doctor's signature. C.A. Chebotarev was a freelance "adhesive plasterer" (that is, a doctor's assistant. This camp term was not invented!) in the labor camp on the Indigirka River.He didn't sign a single piece of the long-term confinement decision, because he thinks that such a confinement room is not suitable for keeping dogs, let alone people: the stove is only for the guards in the corridor to keep warm.But what does it matter?If he didn't sign it, he still took care of it.

Due to the fault of the site director or foreman, or due to failure to install fences or protective devices, the death of prisoners was caused during production.Wouldn't it be time for the Medical Assistance and Sanitation Department to sign off on the fact that he died of a heart attack? (The result is that everything remains the same, so that tomorrow another person dies. If the medical assistant does not do this, tomorrow he will have to go to work! Even if you are a doctor, you have to go down.) The task of the quarterly physical examination is to divide all the residents of the labor camp into the following categories: heavy physical labor, moderate physical labor, light physical labor, and single physical labor.Whenever this kind of health census comedy is performed, have many good doctors come out to oppose their bad section chiefs who only provide a large number of "heavy labor" to protect their hats?

Maybe at least the Hygienist can show a little mercy to those who destroy one part of themselves in order to preserve the rest?But everyone knows this rule, and it’s the same in every reform-through-labour camp: no medical help is allowed for self-injury, limb mutilation, or self-impairment of working ability!The order was issued by the administrative side, so who are you trying to help?It's a doctor....Blow off four fingers with a detonator, come to the small hospital - they won't give you bandages: go away, die, you dog!On the Volga Canal construction site in the early years, when the general competition was in full swing, I don’t know why (?) Incidents of self-declared labor ability suddenly occurred in large numbers.Immediately found the reason: the class enemy made trouble!Are these people going to be cured? ...(Of course this depends on the cunning of the self-reporter: the self-injury can be made unverifiable. Anse Bernstein cleverly scalded a hand with boiling water through a layer of cloth, thus saving a life ...another cleverly froze a hand without gloves. Still others pissed in felt boots and stood in the snow in them. But you can't calculate everything: If things go wrong, gangrene develops in the wounds and kills them. There are also involuntary impairments of labor capacity: Babbage's non-healing ulcers due to ring blood disease are mistaken for syphilis. There is no blood test, and he himself Willingly rant about his and all his relatives having a history of syphilis. As a result he was transferred to an STD quarantine, thus delaying his death.)

When will the health department issue a certificate of exemption from physical labor to all people who are really sick?When will a certain number of seriously ill patients not be driven outside the camp to work?Dr. Sulemanov disapproved of the hospitalization of the "Zek" (prisoner) national hero and comedian Peter Kishkin on the grounds that his diarrhea had not yet reached the standard: it should be every half hour and must be bloody.Kishkin was taken to the construction site with the brigade, and halfway he squatted down at the risk of being shot.But the escort was more merciful than the doctor, and he stopped a passing car and took Kishkin to the hospital.Of course, some people will refute, saying that there is a strict ratio for the number of inpatients and outpatients of category C personnel (patient numbers), and the health department must handle affairs according to this ratio.There is a reason for everything anyway, but there is also a cruelty involved in everything, and that can never be offset by the idea that "the other side has done something good to some people!"

Then I invite you to take a look at the small camp hospitals, such as the inpatient unit of the Krivosegovo No. 2 labor camp.The stench of toilets filled the entire hospital.But is the problem only with the toilet?There were two patients with diarrhea lying on each bed, and there were also two patients on the floor between the beds.Weak and feeble patients were pulled straight to the bed without sheets or medicine (1948-149).The person in charge of the inpatient department is a third-year medical student (who was imprisoned for violating Article 58). He is extremely busy, but there is nothing he can do.Some strong young men were sent to deliver meals to the patients. The patients' food fell into their mouths and their rations were stolen by them.Who arranged for them to do this beautiful job?Undoubtedly "The Godfather".Naturally, the medical students did not have the power to drive these people away in order to protect the rations of the patients.But which doctor has this power... o

Perhaps in a labor camp the sanitation department might be able to obtain real food for the prisoners?For example, at least there will be no "night-blind class" that walks holding hands with each other when they are off work!If, as if miraculously, anyone was contributing to the improvement of food, it must be the production management authority that needs a strong labor force, and it will never be the health department. Nobody puts all these responsibilities on the doctors (although their courage to resist is often weak, for fear of being sent to general labor).But there is no need to create a myth about the health department as the savior—the health department, like any branch of the labor camp, was born of the devil, and it naturally bleeds the devil's blood.

Shalamov continued to develop his ideas, saying that in the labor camp prisoners can only look to the health department for help.They cannot and dare not expect him to benefit from the labor of their hands: it is a dead end. "It's not low rations that kill in labor camps, but high rations." This proverb says it well: a high standard of rations is a murderous knife.After the original season of hauling is done, the hardiest labor can only breathe a sigh of relief.At that time, he was changed to temporary disability treatment: four hundred grams of bread and the lowest level of meals.Most of them die within one winter (say, 725 out of 800).The rest are transferred to "light labor", where they die slowly. What alternatives can we offer Ivan Denisovich?No one wants to be a medical assistant; no one wants to be a hygienist.He was not even issued a sick note for one day.Find a job as a handyman in the camp area. Firstly, there is not enough culture, and secondly, there is too much conscience.Besides relying on your own hands, is there any other way to survive?Take a break?self harm?Fighting for early release on health grounds? Let him talk for himself, he thinks about it, he has time. "Rest point - similar to the rest house opened in the labor camp. Prisoners have worked hard for decades without taking a vacation, and now let them enjoy it - live in a two-week rest point. The food there It’s much better, and they don’t work outside the camp. They only do three or four hours of light work in the camp: smashing stones, cleaning the camp or doing some repair work. A labor camp with 500 people can open a rest camp for 15 people. point. If the distribution is fair, each person can have more than one turn a year. But just as everything in the labor camp is not done properly, the work of the rest point is especially not proper. The opening of the rest point is sneaky, Without anyone noticing, the lists of three batches of people were lined up at once. The closure of the rest point was like a gust of wind, and it could not last even half a year. All the people who rushed in were accountants, barbers, shoemakers, and tailors. They are all high-class people in the labor camp, and they are just a few real coolies for decoration, so I have to say that they are all excellent producers. After entering, the tailor Berebrum will point to your nose and say: I sewed a fur coat for outsiders, and they paid a thousand rubles to the battalion. You idiot spent a month on wooden sticks, and the battalion couldn’t even get a hundred rubles. Who should be a good producer? Who should go to the Rest? You're still thinking about how to get into the Rest to catch your breath, but lo and behold, it's closed. The most annoying thing is that even if you put a note in the prison file It doesn’t matter which year you entered the rest point, isn’t there so many accountants who are idle? No, I don’t remember. Because it’s not good for them. Next year, the rest point will be opened again, and the first batch to enter will be Berebrum again. Your part. In ten years they might stagger you through ten labor camps on their arms, and at the tenth, you want to ask them to allow you to slip under the door of the break point at least once during your entire sentence, and lo and behold Look how beautifully painted the walls are, for you have never been in there. But what do you prove?  … "Screw it, don't get annoyed about taking a break". "Self-impairment of labor ability is very different. Injure yourself a little bit - you can survive, but you have to become a disabled person. As the saying goes: Gritting your teeth for a minute, you can be free for a whole year. Make your legs and then let it dislocate and grow back together. Drinking salt water causes edema, using tea leaves as cigarettes makes the heart go wrong, and drinking the water soaked in tobacco leaves is a good way to make the lungs go wrong. Just do it just right and don’t hurt Take it too far, so don't jump from cripple to grave. But who knows what is the right level? "Being disabled has many advantages: you can find a job in the kitchen, and you can go to the workshop of making bark shoes. But the main purpose for smart people to achieve through disability is to be released early on the grounds of health. It is more difficult to release than to enter a resting place. Besides, this kind of business is only handled in bursts. At a certain time, a committee will be formed to review the disabled, and a certificate will be written for the most serious: This is to prove that a certain person has been healthy since a certain month. The situation is not suitable for continuing to serve the sentence, and I hereby apply for the prisoner's release. "It's just an application! Wait for this certificate to be sent to the boss above, and then wait for the approval to come back. You have already gone to heaven. This kind of thing happens often. Officials are all cunning, and they agree to release them due to illness." It's full of characters who will die in a month, and those who are willing to pay a lot of money. Kallickman has a female criminal who abducted half a million, paid a hundred thousand in it, and got out. Follow us These fools are different. "There was a book circulating in the shed," the college students read aloud as they crowded around their corners.The book tells of a young man who got a million rubles, didn't know what to do with it under the Soviet regime, said he had nothing to buy, and starved to death after touching it.We also laughed: Go and talk nonsense to others.We've sent more than one of these millionaires out the door.With this one million you may not be able to buy the health bestowed by God, but you can buy freedom, power, and a living person with flesh and blood.Now there are a million people out there who don't know how many, it's just that they don't climb on the roof to publicize it. "However, the door to release due to illness is blocked by Article 58. Since the establishment of the labor camp, it is said that prisoners sentenced according to Article 10 have been released early on the grounds of health condition only three times, each time for one month. , Close the door immediately after finishing. No one dares to take money from enemies of the people, and if they take it, they will lose their heads, not to mention that these politicians have no money at all." "Ivan Denisovich, who do you say has no money? Them?" "Yes, it's us..." But there was one opportunity for early release that the blue caps couldn't take away from prisoners.This is death. It is a basic, stable product without any quotas in the archipelago. From the autumn of 1938 to February 1939, 385 out of 550 people in a labor camp in Ustvem died.Certain homework classes (eg Gurtsov's homework team) all, including the homework team leader.In the fall of 1941, there were 50,000 people on the Pechora (Railway) roster, and in the spring of 1942 only 10,000 remained.During this period, no prisoners were deported elsewhere.So where did the 40,000 people go?What is the reason why I highlighted the word "ten thousand"?I learned this figure by chance from a prisoner who was exposed to these figures at the time.But where do we know the figures for the entire labor camp system over the years, and how do we add them up?In the old, weak, sick and disabled work sheds in the center of the Breborom labor camp, twelve out of fifty people died every night, and there was never less than four.By morning their berths were taken by the newly arrived dying, who still dreamed of being revived here with bowls of porridge and four hundred grams of bread. Corpses shriveled by pellagra (no hips, no breasts in women) or decomposed by scurvy were examined in the mortuary's log cabin or simply in the open air.How does this look like medical anatomy?It was cut vertically from the neck to the pubic bone, the limbs were amputated, and the skull was pried open along the sutures.Often it was not the anatomy doctor but the soldiers of the escort team who examined whether the prisoner was really dead or pretended to be dead.The method is to poke holes in the body with a bayonet and hit the head with a big hammer.After finishing the work, tie a small tag on the big toe of the dead person's right foot with the file number representing the prisoner in the labor camp register. For a while, I was buried in my own underwear, and later I had to change into the last gray underwear that had been through three sentences.In the end, a unified regulation was made: underwear should not be wasted (it can also be stripped off for living people to wear), and naked buried. In Russia, it was believed that a person should have a coffin after death.The lowest servants, beggars, and vagabonds were buried in coffins.The convicts in Sakhalin and Akatuy also had coffins after their death.But to do so in the archipelago would be an unproductive expense of millions of timber and labor.After the war, a meritorious foreman of a wood processing joint factory was buried in a coffin in Yingta. The Department of Culture and Education issued a promotional instruction specifically for this matter: work hard and try to be buried in a wooden coffin too! Whether the dead bodies were pulled outside the camp was by sled or cart, depending on the season.Sometimes for convenience, put them into a large wooden box that can accommodate six corpses.If there is no box, tie up your hands and feet with string to prevent them from swaying, and then stack them on the car like a stack of logs and cover them with a straw mat.If there is ammonia nitrate explosives, the burial squad will use it to blow up the grave pit.Otherwise, you have to dig by hand.It has always been a joint burial pit: there are large pits for multiple burials, and shallow pits for four people. (Once the spring begins, the shallow pits will emit a bad smell. At this time, send the old, weak, sick and disabled to deepen them.) On the other hand, no one would condemn us for using gas chambers. The underwear, shoes, and rags of the dead can be used for those who are still alive.But there are a bunch of reform-through-labor files left, which are useless at all, and they are too old.There's nowhere to save it - burn it.You see (Javas labor camp in Dubrovrag, 1959) a dump truck made three trips to the boiler room of the camp, unloading stacks of files.The guards drove the extra prisoners away, and watched the boiler workers burn all these things. In places with a lot of leisure time, such as Kenjill, a small wooden post is inserted on the small grave, and the representative of the dignified registration and distribution department writes the property account number of the cremator on the wooden post.But there were also saboteurs in Kengil: they pointed out the place of burial to the mother and wife of the dead.These girls are always going to cry their graves.So Comrade Chechev, the colonel of Stieprag and the commander of the labor camp, ordered the bulldozer to knock down all the wooden posts.Flatten the grave, who will let these women not know how to be grateful. Female reader, your father, your husband, and your brother are such people. An aborigine's journey ends, his daily life ends here. But Pavel Bykov said: "It hasn't been twenty-four hours since kicking, so don't think everything is over." "Well, Ivan Denisovich, is there anything in our lives that we haven't talked about?" "Cough! It's not even started yet. You can talk for as many years as you have squatted. How the soldiers of the escort team shot and killed those who came out to bend down to pick up cigarette butts... How disabled people eat raw potatoes in the kitchen: wait to cook Once it’s ripe, you can’t catch it..., how tea leaves are used as money in the labor camps, how to brew tea-put fifty grams of tea in a cup, and hallucinations will occur in the mind after drinking. But most of the people who do this kind of thing are thieves, They buy tea from free men with stolen money." How do prisoners generally live? ...If you don't have the ability to twist sand into a rope (no tricks), you won't be able to live a day.Even in his dreams, the prisoner had to think about how he would skate the next day.If you get something, what doorway you find, don't make a sound!be silent!If others find out, they will play tricks on you.This is the case in the labor camp: anyway, it is not enough for everyone, as long as the idea is enough for you. That may be the case, but you say there is no normal friendship between people in the labor camp?In some cases, there are both old friendships - accomplices, companions met outside, and new acquaintances.The two hit it off, so they talked about everything and formed a partner.What is there is a piece of use, and what is missing is half and half.Although life-saving rations are eaten separately, all things obtained by other means are boiled in a small pot, and they are scooped and drunk from a small pot. There are short-term partnerships and long-term partnerships... some are based on sincerity, and some are based on hypocrisy. The "Godfather" likes to swim among such partners like a snake.When eating with friends, when talking in whispers, you can get everything out. The old prisoners thought so, and the ex-captives said the same thing: the man who ate from a small pot with you was the one who betrayed you. Part of it is also true... The best thing to do is not to have a male companion, but to have a female companion. Marry a labor camp daughter-in-law, a female prisoner.As the saying goes - "give a second-class marriage".It's a good thing for young people, because they can find a place to spend the night with her... and let their hearts relax.It is good even for the old and the infirm.You get or earn something, she washes it for you, takes it to the shed, and puts the shirt under the pillow.No joke - it's legal.She cooks the food, and you two sit side by side on the bunk and eat.This kind of warm and slightly bitter life behind bars is very pleasing even to the elderly.You look at her through the steam from the cauldron, her face already wrinkled, just like your own.Both of you are covered with ragged clothes of labor camp prisoners, and your cotton waistcoats are covered with rust, mud, lime, plaster, and engine oil.You have never met her before, you have never been to her hometown, and her words and expressions are "different" from ours.She has children outside, and so do you.Her man stayed out, messing with other women; your woman stayed out, too, and didn't keep a vacancy: eight years, ten years, who wouldn't want to live.This one in your prison drags the same chains as you, and has no complaints. We are not a family when we live together, and we are not a father and mother when we die. There are also cases where the original wife comes to visit the prison.Some camps allowed certain battalion commanders to sit in the gatehouse for twenty minutes while they were in charge.Others would allow them to spend a night or two in a separate hut, if he was 150 percent productive.It can be said that this kind of meeting is purely a bitter medicine.Since it will be many, many years before we can live together with her, what is the purpose of touching her now and talking to her?There are two figures in the eyes of the man, and his relationship with his wife in the labor camp is relatively clear: We still have a bowl of oatmeal left; I heard that burnt sugar will be burned next week; ... The fitter Rodichev's wife came to visit; his friend just happened to bite him on the neck the day before while making out with him.Rodichev cursed because his wife was coming.He went to the health department to ask for gauze to cover the bloodstains: I told her that I had caught a cold. What were the women in the labor camps like?There are female thieves, sluts, political prisoners, and more docile women who violated the "law" and were imprisoned.According to the "law" mentioned above, these women are continuously sent in for the crime of stealing state property.Who filled the wartime and postwar factories?All girls and daughters-in-law.Who does the family depend on for support?They too.But what do you support your family with?If you want food and clothing, you can't take care of Wang Haorushan.So grab some: sour cream in your pocket, rolls in your thighs, stockings wrapped around your waist, and the surer way is to go into the factory without socks, grab a new pair at the factory, put them on, and return home. The family washes it out and then sells it on the black market.Get what you produce.A ball of axis stuffed into the breast groove.The gatekeepers have been bribed, and they have to find a way to survive.They just pat on the body casually.But if a guard suddenly popped up and searched - then you will have to squat for ten years for a bunch of worthless axes!As much as treason!Thousands and tens of thousands come in for the axis. You can take whatever your working conditions permit.Naskika Gulkina was lucky enough to work in the luggage cart.She saw it: our countrymen are stingy, and these bastards can slap you for a towel.So she doesn't move the Soviet boxes, only the foreigners.She said that foreigners can't remember to check in time, and once they find out, they won't write a letter of accusation, they will only spit and curse: These Russian thieves!Still return to his native country. The old accountant Stalev scolded Nastya: "You are skinless, you don't know how to be ashamed! Why don't you think about the honor of our Russia?!" She replied: "Close your fucking mouth, honestly! Go and stay! Why didn't you worry about victory yourself? Why did you send all the officers and gentlemen home to breed?" Fill in the date of treatment in the discharge certificate, so that they can return home before going to the front. The circumstances are serious, and Stalev was originally sentenced to death, but his sentence was later commuted to ten years.) Of course, all kinds of unfortunate women were locked in.One was sentenced to five years for fraud: the man died in the middle of the month, and she hadn't returned his food book by the end of the month, and Yin and his two children used this book to buy bread together.The neighbors denounced her out of jealousy.She squatted in it for four years, because of the amnesty she squatted for one year less. There is also such a thing: the house is blown up, the wife and children are killed, and there is only one man left.All the food books were burned, but this man was insane. He hadn't eaten bread for the thirteen days before the end of the month, and he didn't apply for the money.People suspected that he was holding several books in his hands.Sentenced to three years and squatted for a year and a half. "Wait, wait, Ivan Denisovich, we'll talk about these things later. You said just now - a good girl, a second-class marriage, didn't you? She drags the same chain as you and doesn't complain ,yes?"