2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
Article 58 of the Criminal Code ruined the lives of many law-abiding citizens of the RSFSR. At least four million political prisoners during the Stalin era became acquainted with a kind of concentration camps - Gulags. It must be said that most of them did not conduct counter-revolutionary activities. However, even minor “misconducts” were considered as such, such as a negative assessment of a political figure.
Writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn was one of those who got acquainted with the harsh fifty-eighth article. Letters that he sent from the front to his friends and relatives led him to accusation of "contra". They often contained covert criticism of Stalin, whom A. S. called "godfather." Naturally, such letters could not be passed by censorship. Moreover, she was seriously interested in them. The Soviet counterintelligence arrested the freethinker. As a result, he lost the rank of captain, received 8 years of corrective labor without the right to return from exile. It was he who decided to lift the veil over part of the Stalinist punitive system by writing the immortal book The Gulag Archipelago. Let's figure out what is the meaning of its name and what is the content.
The Gulag archipelago is a system that connected thousands of Soviet penitentiaries. A considerable, and according to some sources, most of the prisoners of this huge punitive monster are political prisoners. As Solzhenitsyn himself wrote, many of them, even at the stage of arrest, cherished the vain dream that their case would be carefully considered and the charge would be dropped from them. And they hardly believed in the reality of such ideas, having already got to places not so remote.
"Political arrests were distinguished by the fact that people who were innocent and unable to resist were taken," Solzhenitsyn noted. The author described some of the largest flows of prisoners: the victims of dispossession (1929-1930), those who suffered from the repressions of 1937, as well as those who were in German captivity (1944-1946). The GULAG archipelago hospitably opened its gates to we althy peasants, priests and believers in general, the intelligentsia, professors. The injustice of the Stalinist punitive machine is evidenced only by the very fact of the existence of plans for the total number of prisoners (which were most often expressed in round numbers). Naturally, the "NKVD" zealously overfulfilled them.
Torture
A large part of Solzhenitsyn's book is devoted to this question: why did the arrested almost always sign "confessions" in those terrible years, even if their guilt did not exist? The answer truly will not leave the reader indifferent. The author lists the inhuman torture that was used in the "organs". The list is incredibly wide - from simple persuasion in conversation toinjury to the genitals. Here we can also mention sleep deprivation for several days, knocking out teeth, torture by fire … The author, realizing the whole essence of the infernal Stalinist machine, asks the reader not to judge those who, unable to bear the torture, agreed with everything they were accused of. But there was something worse than self-incrimination. For the rest of their lives, those who, unable to stand it, slandered their best friends or relatives, were tormented by remorse. At the same time, there were also very courageous individuals who did not sign anything.
The power and influence of the "NKVD"
The organ workers were often real careerists. The statistics of "crime detection" promised them new ranks, higher salaries. Using their power, the Chekists often allowed themselves to take the apartments they liked and the women they liked. The "security forces" could easily get their enemies out of the way. But they themselves were involved in a dangerous game. None of them was immune from accusations of betrayal, sabotage, espionage. Describing this system, Solzhenitsyn dreamed of a real, fair trial.
Prison life
The author of the book "The Gulag Archipelago" spoke about all the vicissitudes of imprisonment. There was to be a snitch in every cell. However, the prisoners quickly learned to distinguish between such people. This circumstance led to the secrecy of the inhabitants of the chambers. The entire diet of prisoners - gruel, brown bread and boiling water. Of the pleasures and small pleasures were chess, walking, reading books. Solzhenitsyn's book"The Gulag Archipelago" reveals to the reader the features of all categories of prisoners - from "kulaks" to "thieves". It also describes the relationship between the inmates, sometimes difficult.
However, Solzhenitsyn wrote not only about life in prison. "The Gulag Archipelago" is also a work that outlines the history of the legislation of the RSFSR. The author consistently compared the system of Soviet justice and justice with a child when it was still undeveloped (1917-1918); with a young man (1919-1921) and with a mature person, while laying out a lot of interesting details.
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