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

People in the cells sometimes discussed how the Lubyanka system and schedule, and those in other prisons as well, had come into being, whether through calculated brutality or as a matter of chance. My opinion is that both factors are involved. The rising time is, obviously, a matter of malicious intent, but much of the rest evolved automatically at first (which is true of many of the brutalities of life generally) and was then discovered by the powers that be to be useful and was therefore made permanent. The shifts change at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., and it was more convenient for everyone to take the prisoners to the toilet at the end of a shift. (Letting them out singly in the middle of the day was extra trouble and meant extra precautions, and no one got paid for that.) The same was true of the business with eyeglasses: Why should one worry about that at 6 a.m.? They could be returned to the owners just before the end of the shift instead.

So now we heard them being brought around—doors were being opened. We could guess whether someone wore them in the cell next door. (And didn’t your codefendant wear spectacles? But we didn’t feel up to knocking out a message on the wall. This was punished very severely.) A moment later they would bring the eyeglasses to our cell. Fastenko used them only for reading. But Susi needed them all the time. He could stop squinting once he’d put them on. Thanks to his horn-rimmed glasses and straight lines above the eyes, his face became severe, perspicacious, exactly the face of an educated man of our century as we might picture it to ourselves. Back before the Revolution he had studied at the Faculty of History and Philology of the University of Petrograd, and throughout his twenty years in independent Estonia he had preserved intact the purest Russian speech, which he spoke like a native. Later, in Tartu, he had studied law. In addition to Estonian, he spoke English and German, and through all these years he continued to read the London Economist and the German scientific “Berichte” summaries. He had studied the constitutions and the codes of law of various countries—and in our cell he represented Europe worthily and with restraint. He had been a leading lawyer in Estonia and been known as “kuldsuu”—meaning “golden-tongued.”

There was new activity in the corridor. A free-loader in a gray smock—a husky young fellow who had certainly not been at the front—brought a tray with our five bread rations and ten lumps of sugar. Our cell stoolie hovered over them, even though we would inevitably cast lots for them—which we did because every least detail of this was important: the heel of the loaf, for instance, and the number of smaller pieces needed to make the total weight come out right, and how the crust adheres, or doesn’t, to the inside of the bread—and it was better that fate should decide. [116] 15. Where indeed in our country did this casting of lots not happen? It was the result of our universal and endless hunger. In the army, all rations were divided up the same way. And the Germans, who could hear what was going on from their trenches, teased us about it: “Who gets it? The political commissar!” But the stoolie felt he just had to hold everything in his hands for at least a second so that some bread and sugar molecules would cling to his palms.

That pound of unrisen wet bread, with its swamplike sogginess of texture, made half with potato flour, was our crutch and the main event of the day. Life had begun! The day had begun—this was when it began! And everyone had countless problems. Had he allocated his bread ration wisely the day before? Should he cut it with a thread? Or break it up greedily? Or slowly, quietly nip off pieces one by one? Should he wait for tea or pile into it right now? Should he leave some for dinner or finish it off at lunch? And how much?

In addition to these wretched dilemmas, what wide-ranging discussions and arguments went on (for our tongues had been liberated and with bread we were once more men) provoked by this one-pound chunk in our hand, consisting more of water than of grain. (Incidentally, Fastenko explained that the workers of Moscow were eating the very same bread at that time.) And, generally speaking, was there any real breadgrain in this bread at all? And what additives were in it? (There was at least one person in every cell who knew all about additives, for, after all, who hadn’t eaten them during these past decades?) Discussions and reminiscences began. About the white bread they had baked back in the twenties—springy round loaves, like sponge cake inside, with a buttery reddish-brown top crust and a bottom crust that still had a trace of ash from the coals of the hearth—that bread had vanished for good! Those born in 1930 would never know what bread is. Friends, this is a forbidden subject! We agreed not to say one word about food.

Once again there was movement in the corridor—tea was being brought around. A new young tough in a gray smock carrying pails. We put our teapot out in the corridor and he poured straight into it from a pail without a spout—into the teapot and onto the runner and the floor beneath it. And the whole corridor was polished like that of a first-class hotel. [117] 16. Soon the biologist Timofeyev-Ressovsky, whom I have already mentioned, would be brought here from Berlin. There was nothing at the Lubyanka, it appeared, which so offended him as this spilling on the floor. He considered it striking evidence of the lack of professional pride on the part of the jailers, and of all of us in our chosen work. He multiplied the 27 years of Lubyanka’s existence as a prison by 730 times (twice for each day of the year), and then by 111 cells—and he would seethe for a long time because it was easier to spill boiling water on the floor 2,188,000 times and then come and wipe it up with a rag the same number of times than to make pails with spouts.

And that was all they gave us. Whatever cooked food we got would be served at 1 p.m. and at 4 p.m., one meal almost on the heels of the other. You could then spend the next twenty-one hours remembering it. (And that wasn’t prison brutality either: it was simply a matter of the kitchen staff having to do its work as quickly as possible and leave.)

At nine o’clock the morning check-up took place. For a long while beforehand, we could hear especially loud turns of the key and particularly sharp knocks on the doors. Then one of the duty lieutenants for the whole floor would march forward and enter, almost as erect as if he were standing at attention. He would take two steps forward and look sternly at us. We would be on our feet. (We didn’t even dare remember that political prisoners were once not required to rise.) It was no work at all to count us—he could do it in a glance—but this was a moment for testing our rights. For we did have some rights, after all, although we did not really know them, and it was his job to hide them from us. The whole strength of the Lubyanka training showed itself in a totally machinelike manner: no expression on the face, no inflection, not a superfluous word.

And which of our rights did we know about? A request to have our shoes repaired. An appointment with the doctor. Although if they actually took you to the doctor, you would not be happy about the consequences. There the machinelike Lubyanka manner would be particularly striking. He didn’t ask: “What’s your trouble?” That would take too many words, and one couldn’t pronounce the phrase without any inflection. He would ask curtly: “Troubles?” And if you began to talk at too great length about your ailment, he would cut you off. It was clear anyway. A toothache? Extract it. You could have arsenic. A filling? We don’t fill teeth here. (That would have required additional appointments and created a somewhat humane atmosphere.)