JEDRUCZEK, continued

Guards not only enjoyed watching people suffer; they were also rewarded for shooting a prisoner who attempted to escape. In fact, according to Applebaum, they often provoked such escapes for which they “could even be granted a vacation at home”(273). In the words of Solzhenitsyn, “Year by year they coarsened in the service, and you couldn’t observe in them the least cloudlet of pity toward the soaked, freezing, hungry, tired, and dying prisoners” (554). No wonder the warden from Razgon’s memoirs admitted that his conscience didn’t bother him and that he felt like the women and men he executed never existed (137).

Yet even in such a dehumanizing place like the Gulag, some good-hearted people could be found. That was the case during World War II, when all guards were sent to the front, and old men were assigned to guard the prisoners. NKVD officers were sent to the front where their fanaticism boosted the morale of other soldiers (Levytsky 159). According to Solzhenitsyn, who remembers those better years, the new guards “understood the shame of their service.” It was something they didn’t mention to their families at home (557). Applebaum gives examples of bosses and guards who “saved hundreds from death” by creating better living conditions, and others who “paid special attention to the mothers in the camp” (272). Immediately after war those guards were sent home and were replaced by ex-Red army soldiers. However those soldiers who were captured by the enemy were regarded as political prisoners because they had contact with the West (Levytsky 185).

Guards who were in the system had a choice between treating others as human beings or treating them like animals. Petrov writes that very few prisoners were able to preserve themselves; the majority turned into animals “in the lowest sense of the word” (300). Petrov describes in his book the prisoners he saw upon his arrival in Kolyma. He recalls men who had “starved, worn-out faces, quiet voices, were completely absorbed in themselves and uncommunicative. Their range of interest was limited to work and food, and more food, and food again” (254). Lipper mentions a prisoner who wrote a petition where he wanted a commander of the camp to transfer him to the status of a horse. The prisoner explained that the horse gets more food, and it is treated with much more respect and care than workers. The prisoner was sentenced to solitary confinement for making those remarks (225-26). Solzhenitsyn emphasizes that many guards were subjected to “intense ideological irradiation” and that “unlimited power in the hands of unlimited people always leads to cruelty” (560). There were some, however, who understood the true nature of the system. At the end, as Applebaum argues, “nobody forced guards to rescue the young and murder the old. Nobody forced camp commanders to kill off the sick” (279). They all had a free will.

During the Stalin era, as Petrov put it, the population of the USSR was divided into three categories: “prisoners, ex- prisoners, and future prisoners” (223). People lived under a constant fear of being arrested and imprisoned. Ironically, many believed in the Soviet system, were members of the Communist Party, and supported Stalin. One did not have to be a thief or a killer to be arrested. Having a suspicious family member or a friend, or simply being in a wrong place at a wrong time made one “an enemy of the state.” It is frightening to think about the living conditions in camps situated in the Artic Circle and the suffering prisoners endured for years. It is even more appalling to think of the guards who supervised the prisoners and saw them deteriorate into mere shadows. Is it possible that a majority of them were simply numb to human suffering and pain? And after the labor camps stopped functioning, why were they not put on trial like some of the Nazis? There are people still sympathetic to Stalin and there are guards who are proud of their service to mother Russia. Applebaum describes her conversation with a former inspector of camps, Olga Vasileevna, who argued that the job of the camp commander was extremely dangerous since one had to deal with criminals and murderers. She mentions that bosses did not always eat well, especially during the war and that “it wasn’t only prisoners who had lice, the bosses had them too” (262- 63). Nevertheless, forced labor camps will always be part of Russia’s history. People, to this day, credit Stalin for transforming Russia into a superpower. They easily forget the millions of people who perished in mines, forests and fields while building Stalin’s projects or extracting gold. There are no official monuments erected commemorating the lost souls; instead, Russia has cities built on the bones of the dead prisoners. There are people who never returned from Gualgs. They stayed because they were too poor to afford a trip back or they had no family to return to. Ironically, former guards and NKVD officials, who still live, enjoy their comfortable apartments and retirement pensions all provided by the government. Applebaum described Vasileevna’s apartment as “unusually spacious, the gift of a grateful Party” (262). Razgon states that guards retired and “most of them receive large individual pensions. They sit in the squares and watch the children play. They go to concerts and are moved by the music” (138). They seem to be proud of their service and apparently they have no sense of guilt. After all they helped to build what is still considered a “superpower”.

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