" wasn’t going to try and get the foreman’s job, even though it gave you a chance of staying alive, for the worst thing in the camps was forcing another person, a prisoner like yourself, to bow to your will (or anyone else’s). What did it matter that I knew that Ivanov was a swine, that Petrov was a spy and Zaslavsky a false witness? "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Stories