The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 3 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Author:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn [Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

Although there was nothing unconstitutional in any of these demands, nothing that threatened the foundations of the state (indeed, many of them were requests for a return to the old position), it was impossible for the bosses to accept even the least of them, because these bald skulls under service caps and supported by close-clipped fat necks had forgotten how to admit a mistake or a fault. Truth was unrecognizable and repulsive to them if it manifested itself not in secret instructions from higher authority but on the lips of common people.

Still, the obduracy of the eight thousand under siege was a blot on the reputation of the generals, it might ruin their careers, and so they made promises. They promised that nearly all the demands would be satisfied—only, they said (to make it more convincing), they could hardly leave the women’s camp open, that was against the rules (forgetting that in the Corrective Labor Camps it had been that way for twenty years), but they could consider arranging, should they say, meeting days. To the demand that the Commission of Inquiry (into the circumstances of the shooting) should start its work inside the camp, the generals unexpectedly agreed. (But Sluchenkov guessed their purpose, and refused to hear of it: while making their statements, the stoolies would expose everything that was happening in the camp.) Review of cases? Well, of course, cases would be re-examined, but prisoners would have to be patient. There was one thing that couldn’t wait at all—the prisoners must get back to work! to work! to work!

But the zeks knew that trick by now: dividing them up into columns, forcing them to the ground at gunpoint, arresting the ringleaders.

No, they answered across the table, and from the platform. No! shouted voices from the crowd. The administration of Steplag have behaved like provocateurs! We do not trust the Steplag authorities! We don’t trust the MVD!

“Don’t trust even the MVD?” The vice-minister was thrown into a sweat by this treasonable talk. “And who can have inspired in you such hatred for the MVD?”

A riddle, if ever there was one.

“Send us a member of the Central Committee Presidium! A member of the Presidium! Then we’ll believe you!” shouted the zeks.

“Be careful,” the generals threatened. “You’ll make it worse for yourselves!”

At this Kuznetsov got up. He spoke calmly and precisely, and he held himself proudly.

“If you enter the camp with weapons,” he warned them, “don’t forget that half of those here had a hand in the capture of Berlin. They can cope even with your weapons!”

Kapiton Kuznetsov! Some future historian of the Kengir mutiny must help us to understand the man better. What were his thoughts, how did he feel about his imprisonment? What stage did he imagine his appeal to have reached? How long was it since he had asked for a review, if the order of release (with rehabilitation, I believe) arrived from Moscow during the rebellion? His pride in keeping the mutinous camp in such good order—was

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