The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 2 by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

Author:Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2020-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

Well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat! Court-martial! Death sentence. And Chebotaryov was so fed up with life in the Fatherland he didn’t even petition for mercy. But the state needed working hands, so he got ten years plus five muzzled. Once again he was back in his “native home.” He served (with time off for work) nine years.

And there was yet another chance encounter. In camp another zek, N. F——v, called him over to a far corner of the upper bunks and there asked him quietly: “What’s your name?” “Avtonom Vasilich.” “And what province were you born in?” “Tyumen.” “What district? What village soviet?” Chebotaryov-Chupin gave all the correct answers and heard: “You’re lying. I worked on the same locomotive as Avtonom Chupin for five years, I know him as well as I know myself. Was it you who swiped his documents one day in May, 1936?” Now that’s the kind of invisible underwater anchor a fugitive can rip open his belly on! What novelist would be believed if he were to think up an encounter like that? By that time Chebotaryov again wanted to survive and warmly shook that good man’s hand when the latter said: “Don’t be afraid, I won’t go to the godfather. I’m not a bastard!”

And thus it was that Chebotaryov served out his second term, as Chupin. But to his misfortune his last camp was a top-secret one, one of that group of atomic projects—Moscow-10, Tura-38, Sverdlovsk-39, and Chelyabinsk-40. They were engaged in separating uranium-radium ores, and construction was proceeding according to Kurchatov’s plans, and the construction chief was Lieutenant General Tkachenko, who was subordinate only to Stalin and Beria. Every quarter the zeks had to renew their pledges of “nondisclosure.” But this was not the real trouble—the real trouble was that those released were not allowed to return home. The “released” prisoners were sent off in a large group in September, 1950—to the Kolyma! Only there were they relieved of convoy and declared to be a particularly dangerous special contingent! They were dangerous because they had helped make the atomic bomb! (How can one really keep up with all this and describe it? Chapters and chapters are necessary!) There were tens of thousands of similar ones scattered all over the Kolyma!! (Look through the Constitution! Look through the Codes! What do they say about special contingents??)

Well, at least he could send for his wife now! She came to him at the Maldyak goldfields. And from there they began to seek their sons again—but the replies were all negative: “No.” “Not listed here.”

Stalin kicked the bucket—and the old folks moved from the Kolyma to the Caucasus—to warm their bones. Things eased up, though slowly. And in 1959 their son Viktor, a Kiev lathe operator, decided to get rid of his hateful new name and declared himself to be the son of the enemy of the people Chebotaryov! And a year later his parents found him! And now the father’s problem was

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