101
" It turns out that in that terrible year Andrei Yanuaryevich (one longs to blurt out, “Jaguaryevich”) Vyshinsky, availing himself of the most flexible dialectics (of a sort nowadays not permitted either Soviet citizens or electronic calculators, since to them yes is yes and no is no), pointed out in a report which became famous in certain circles that it is never possible for mortal men to establish absolute truth, but relative truth only. He then proceeded to a further step, which jurists of the last two thousand years had not been willing to take: that the truth established by interrogation and trial could not be absolute, but only, so to speak, relative. Therefore, when we sign a sentence ordering someone to be shot we can never be absolutely certain, but only approximately, in view of certain hypotheses, and in a certain sense, that we are punishing a guilty person. Thence arose the most practical conclusion: that it was useless to seek absolute evidence—for evidence is always relative—or unchallengeable witnesses—for they can say different things at different times. The proofs of guilt were relative, approximate, and the interrogator could find them, even when there was no evidence and no witness, without leaving his office, “basing his conclusions not only on his own intellect but also on his Party sensitivity, his moral forces” (in other words, the superiority of someone who has slept well, has been well fed, and has not been beaten up) “and on his character” (i.e., his willingness to apply cruelty!). In only one respect did Vyshinsky fail to be consistent and retreat from dialectical logic: for some reason, the executioner’s bullet which he allowed was not relative but absolute. . . . Thus it was that the conclusions of advanced Soviet jurisprudence, proceeding in a spiral, returned to barbaric or medieval standards. Like medieval torturers, our interrogators, prosecutors, and judges agreed to accept the confession of the accused as the chief proof of guilt. "
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged)
102
" However, the simple-minded Middle Ages used dramatic and picturesque methods to squeeze out the desired confessions: the rack, the wheel, the bed of nails, impalement, hot coals, etc. In the twentieth century, taking advantage of our more highly developed medical knowledge and extensive prison experience (and someone seriously defended a doctoral dissertation on this theme), people came to realize that the accumulation of such impressive apparatus was superfluous and that, on a mass scale, it was also cumbersome. And in addition . . . In addition, there was evidently one other circumstance. As always, Stalin did not pronounce that final word, and his subordinates had to guess what he wanted. Thus, like a jackal, he left himself an escape hole, so that he could, if he wanted, beat a retreat and write about “dizziness from success.” After all, for the first time in human history the calculated torture of millions was being undertaken, and, even with all his strength and power, Stalin could not be absolutely sure of success. In dealing with such an enormous mass of material, the effects of the experiment might differ from those obtained from a smaller sample. An unforeseen explosion might take place, a slippage in a geological fault, or even world-wide disclosure. In any case, Stalin had to remain innocent, his sacred vestments angelically pure. "
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged)
106
" All this is happening right next to you; you can almost touch it, but it's invisible ... At the big stations the loading and unloading of the dirty faces takes place far, far from the passenger platform and is seen only by switchmen and roadbed inspectors ... And you, hurrying along the platform with your children, your suitcases, and your string bags, are too busy to look closely ... The train starts - and a hundred crowded prisoner destinies, tormented hearts, are borne along the same snaky rails, behind the same smoke, past the same fields, posts, and haystacks as you ...You are dissatisfied because there are four of you in your compartment and it is crowded. And could you possibly believe ... that in the same size compartment as yours, but up ahead in that zak car, there are fourteen people? ... And if there are thirty? And ... why should a Soviet soldier have to carry water ... for enemies of the people? It isn't done especially to torture people. A sentenced prisoner is a laboring soldier of socialism, so why should he be tortured? They need him for construction work. But ... there is no reason in the world to treat him so well that people out in freedom would envy him ... Look around you ... Thin strands of human lives stretch from island to island of the Archipelago. They intertwine, touch one another for one night only in just such a clickety-clacking half-dark car as this ... "
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged)
108
" It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that "past" which "ought not to be stirred up."
We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. It is for this reason, and not because of the "weakness of indoctrinational work," that they are growing up "indifferent." Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.
It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country! "
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged)
110
" What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms bend, if both eyes see, and if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart - and prize above all else in the world those who love you and wish you well. "
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged)
115
" Punishment cells were set up in the two-story cathedral ... Poles the thickness of an arm were set from wall to wall and prisoners were ordered to sit on these poles all day ... one's feet could not reach the ground. And it was not so easy to keep balance ... the prisoner spent the entire day just trying to maintain his perch. If he fell, the jailers jumped in and beat him ... Every little island and every little hillock of the Archipelago had to be encircled by a hostile, stormy Soviet seascape ... Escapes multiplied ... For half a year the sea was frozen over, but not solidly, and in places there was open water, and the snowstorms raged, and the frost bit hard, and things were enveloped in mists and darkness. And in the spring ... there were the long white nights with clear visibility over long distances for the patrolling cutters ... it was only when the nights began to lengthen, in the late summer and the autumn, that the time was right ... for those who were out in work parties, where a prisoner might have freedom of movement and time to build a boat or a raft near the shore ... and to cast off at night ... and strike out at random, hoping above all to encounter a foreign ship ... The whole long history of the Archipelago, about which it has fallen to me to write this home-grown, homemade book, has, in the course of half a century, found in the Soviet Union almost no expression whatever in the printed word. In this a role was played by that same unfortunate happenstance by which camp watchtowers never got into scenes in films nor into landscapes painted by our artists ... "
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged)
116
" Why, for example, is it still acceptable to profess the philosophy of a Communist or, if not that, to at least admire the work of Marx? Why is it still acceptable to regard the Marxist doctrine as essentially accurate in its diagnosis of the hypothetical evils of the free-market, democratic West; to still consider that doctrine “progressive,” and fit for the compassionate and proper thinking person? Twenty-five million dead through internal repression in the Soviet Union. Sixty million dead in Mao’s China. The horrors of Cambodia’s Killing Fields, with their two million corpses. The barely animate body politic of Cuba, where people struggle even now to feed themselves. Venezuela, where it has now been made illegal to attribute a child’s death in hospital to starvation. No political experiment has ever been tried so widely, with so many disparate people, in so many different countries and failed so absolutely and so catastrophically. Is it mere ignorance that allows today’s Marxists to flaunt their continued allegiance – to present it as compassion and care? Or is it instead, envy of the successful, in near-infinite proportions? Or something akin to hatred for mankind itself? How much proof do we need? "
― Jordan B. Peterson , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged)
