Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - The GULag Archipelago Volume 1 - An Experiment in Literary Investigation

Our generation would return—having turned in its weapons, jingling its heroes’ medals, proudly telling its combat stories. And our younger brothers would only look at us contemptuously: Oh, you stupid dolts!

These translator’s notes are not intended to overlap the extensive explanatory and reference material contained in the author’s own notes in the text and in the glossary which follows. They attempt to give that minimum of factual material about this book and the whole work of which it is a part which will enable the reader better to put it in perspective and understand what it is, and also to deal with several areas of special Russian terminology.

The glossary which follows these notes can be very useful. It gives in alphabetical order capsule identification of persons, institutions and their acronyms, political movements, and events mentioned in the text.

The title of the book in Russian—Arkhipelag GULag—has a resonance resulting from a rhyme which cannot be rendered in English.

The image evoked by this title is that of one far-flung “country” with millions of “natives,” consisting of an archipelago of islands, some as tiny as a detention cell in a railway station and others as vast as a large Western European country, contained within another country—the U.S.S.R. This archipelago is made up of the enormous network of penal institutions and all the rest of the web of machinery for police oppression and terror imposed throughout the author’s period of reference on all Soviet life. Gulag is the acronym for the Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps which supervised the larger part of this system.

The author’s decision to publish this work was triggered by a tragedy of August, 1973: A Leningrad woman to whom the author had entrusted a portion of his manuscript for safekeeping broke down after 120 sleepless hours of intensive questioning by Soviet Security officers and revealed where she had hidden it—enabling them to seize it. Thereupon, in her desperation and depression, she committed suicide. It is to this event that the author refers in the statement that precedes the text: “Now that State Security has seized the book anyway, I have no alternative but to publish it immediately.”

This present English-language edition of Parts I and II of The Gulag Archipelago differs very slightly, as a result of author’s corrections and other corrections, from the Russian-language first edition of these parts which was published by the YMCA-Press in Paris in late December, 1973.

The Gulag Archipelago is a sweeping, panoramic work which consists in all of seven parts divided into three volumes—of which this present book, the first volume, contains two parts, representing about one-third of the whole.

One of the important aspects of Solzhenitsyn as a Russian literary figure is his contribution to the revival and expansion of the Russian literary language through introducing readers in his own country (and abroad) to the language, terminology, and slang of camps, prisons, the police, and the underworld. Millions of Soviet citizens became fully familiar with a whole new vocabulary through imprisonment. But this vocabulary did not find its way into Russian literature until Solzhenitsyn put it there—to the bewilderment of some of the uninitiated.

In this category there are terms in this book which require explanation.

Soviet Security services personnel, for example, are referred to in a variety of special epithets, some of them carrying overtones of contempt. Most of these have been manufactured from the various initials, at one time and another, of the basic Soviet secret police organization:

The oldest of these terms is, of course, “Chekist”—pronounced “Che-keest,” with the accent on the last syllable—from “Cheka.” Though the name “Cheka” was replaced more than half a century ago, this label for Soviet Security personnel is still used—and is much beloved by the personnel of the Organs themselves.

“Gaybist,” which is pronounced “gay-beest,” with the accent on the last syllable, is derived from the letters “g” and “b” standing for State Security.

Likewise “Gaybeshnik”—pronounced “gay-besh-neek,” with the accent on the second syllable.

“Emvaydeshnik”—pronounced as it is spelled here, with the accent on the third syllable—is derived similarly from the Russian pronunciation of the letters “M” “V” “D”—for Ministry of Internal Affairs.

“Gaypayooshnik”—accent also on the third syllable—comes from “G” “P” “U” or “Gaypayoo.”

“Osobist”—pronounced “oh-so-beest,” with accent on the last syllable—is an officer of the Special Branch, representing State Security, usually in a military unit—the “Osoby Otdel.”

All these terms have their pungent flavor, which comes through even to the English-speaking reader—and they have therefore often been used as is in the text of this translation.

In the Gulag world there was one particular type of police official who had special significance. This was the “operupolno-mochenny”—“oper” for short. Literally rendered, this title means “operations plenipotentiary”—the operations being Security operations, often in a forced-labor camp, where he had enormous power deriving from the fact that he represented State Security in an institution under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. His nickname among the prisoners was “Kum,” which can be translated approximately as “godfather” or “father confessor.” He was in charge of all camp stool pigeons and he had responsibility for the political supervision of all the prisoners. Throughout this work his title has been translated as “Security operations officer” or more usually just “Security officer,” or “Security chief.”

The Russian thieves are not just plain ordinary thieves, but constitute a whole underworld subculture which gets much attention and is well described in this book. The Russian thieves are “vory”—meaning thieves. They are also the “blatnye” (plural); “blatnoi” is the masculine singular form and also the adjective, describing a thing or person attached to the underworld or to the law or companionship of thieves.

The Russian thieves are also the “blatari” and the “urki.” They are also “tsvetnye”—in other words “colored.” And a person “polutsvetnoi”—“half-colored” or “mulatto”—is a non-thief who has begun to take up the ways of the thieves.

By and large, to the extent that these and other terms appear in their original form in this translation they are clearly enough explained. But wherever the word “thief” appears it means one of the “blatnye.”

The language of the Russian thieves is used in this work to refer to much more than themselves.

Thus a nonthief in thief language is a “frayer.” By virtue of being a nonthief he is also naturally “a mark,” “a cull,” “a pigeon,” “an innocent,” “a sucker.” In this translation, “frayer” has been rendered throughout as “sucker.”

Some other terms that relate to the world of Gulag require special explanation:

At times in the text “ugolovniki” (which we have translated as “habitual criminals”) and “bytoviki” (which we have translated as “nonpolitical offenders”) have been grouped together in contrast to the political prisoners.

A “bytovik” is any prisoner who is not a political nor one of the Russian thieves—and the “bytoviki” or “nonpolitical offenders” make up the enormous main mass of the prisoners. The distinction here is just as much psychological as legal, and in English there is nothing that exactly translates this Russian term.