JEDRUCZEK, continued

According to Applebaum, the bosses who were loyal to the Communist Party enjoyed the life of luxury and were rewarded with “higher salaries, better bonuses, and longer vacations” (267). Radzinsky mentions that the NKVD always received special treatment and they were placed higher than the regular party members. They received the best apartments, were sent to sanatoriums, and hospitals (347). They saw themselves as better than ordinary jailers who, according to Solzhenitsyn, “had much less - and were allowed to steal less too” (555). Solzhenitsyn compares bosses to plantation owners, who rode on horseback to inspect workers digging out potatoes in the muddy fields (554). Applebaum emphasizes that all bosses had their own servants and they even began to compete among each other over who produced “the best prisoner theatrical groups, the best prisoner orchestras, the best prisoner artists” (268).

Solzhenitsyn devotes a whole chapter in the second volume of The Gulag Archipelago to guards. Interestingly, he doesn’t call the administrators and jailers guards, but “dogs.” He compares guards’ service to that of guard dogs. Solzhenitsyn writes, “There are whole officers’ committees which monitor the work of an individual dog, fostering a good viciousness in the dog.” He further explains that police dogs were better fed than prisoners, and that the maintenance of guards cost the government a lot (534).

According to Solzhenitsyn, prison keepers and ordinary guards all shared the same basic characteristics. They were arrogant, stupid, despotic, money-hungry, and most of all, cruel (539-46). As Applebaum writes, due to severe living conditions in a majority of the camps, the administration in Moscow constantly experienced shortages of personnel. Some Russians, however, volunteered to work as guards because it meant social advance; others were sent to the camps not knowing what was the nature of their task (260-61). Vladimir Petrov states that those who volunteered for this type of service “were men not well adapted to normal working life because they were not too bright, lacked professional skills or preferred an easy life” (251). Lipper writes that free citizens who took a job at the camp had to participate in the exploitation of the dead-tired prisoners (212). The Gulag officials described guards as “not second-class but fourth-class people, the very dregs” (Applebaum 260- 61). Drinking was their only source of entertainment and, as Applebaum describes, some guards organized drinking sessions where they “drank themselves into unconsciousness” or they were too intoxicated to guard their posts (258). Lev Razgon, in “The Routine of Execution,” describes his conversation with a former warden, Grigory Ivanovich, whom he met in the hospital. The warden recalls that every morning they were given “a shot glass of Vodka” and then began executing political prisoners (136). Lipper mentions that everybody drank in Kolyma (the camp she was assigned to) to drown something inside, not because of the bitter cold (213).

Guards lacked higher education; the majority completed only third or fifth grade. According to reports gathered by Applebaum, many guards didn’t even know the members of the Communist Party, nor did they know how to use their weapons. Applebaum gives example of guards who did not know how to clean and take care of their weapons, and mentions a female guard who stood “on duty with her rifle barrel stuffed with a rag” (261). According to Solzhenitsyn, guards thought that they didn’t have to read or learn and that they knew everything “inside out” (504). In reality, as Applebaum writes, they only “had the dimmest idea of why they are doing their job” (260). Ivanovich admitted to Razgon that he didn’t give a thought about the executions. After he has done his job he would have “as much to drink” as he wanted and then go to sleep or go for a walk (137). Dallin emphasizes that local NKVD officials operated under terror and fear of repercussions and a possible arrest if they did not meet the standards (32). Petrov notes that guards were taught to regard prisoners as “enemies of the people” who they could treat “like scum of the earth with complete impunity” (252). Lipper writes that managers of the camp were interested in fulfilling the plan by more than a hundred percent and the only worked they had done was “dreaming up new methods of extorting a little more work from the prisoners” (216). Petrov, who worked in the gold mines, states that those who failed to fulfill the quota were sentenced to death and then immediately executed (291).

According to Solzhenitsyn, having no limit to their power guards eventually, “developed anger with a twist, in other words,” sadism (547). Applebaum writes about cruelty toward prisoners, which was “genuinely sadistic” in its nature. She gives an example of a guard who derived pleasure from “forcing prisoners to stand slowly freezing, in the snow” (272). According to Dallin, “Putting fear into the souls of prisoners was developed into a system.” Guards used dogs to help them watch over prisoners in the taiga. Such dogs were specially trained to dislike people who wore ragged clothes, thus it was impossible for a fugitive to escape such a vicious beast (124). Solzhenitsyn mentions a guard who refused to release prisoners from barracks despite a forest fire approaching the camp with a high speed. The guard, who didn’t have time to speak to higher authorities, decided to let the prisoners burn (559).

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