
Things I Learned in the Gulag - smacktoward
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/12/forty-five-things-i-learned-in-the-gulag
======
wallace_f
30\. I discovered that the world should be divided not into good and bad
people but into cowards and non-cowards. Ninety-five percent of cowards are
capable of the vilest things, lethal things, at the mildest threat.

This is incredibly consistent with my observations.

Possibly an explanation for the nature of the Founding Fathers.

------
pnathan
Unchecked power is a bad thing to hand to another human being.

------
pattle
On a similar note and for anyone interested, I read "Zone 22" recently

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zone-22-Tig-
Hague/dp/0718153561](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zone-22-Tig-Hague/dp/0718153561)

It's the story of a UK business man who got caught with a small amount of
hashish in his pocket at Moscow airport and ended up spending 4 years in a
prison camp.

It makes for a pretty interesting -if grim at times - read.

------
MichaelMoser123
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxpq1-eqcuo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxpq1-eqcuo)
Clouds by Galich. brings up this song for me

Here is a translation of the lyrics:
[http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/stalin/d2...](http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/stalin/d2.html)

    
    
      The clouds float by, the clouds, 
      Without hurrying, like in a film.  
      I'm eating chicken tabaka, 
      And I've sunk a load of cognac.
    
      The clouds float off to Abakan [a Gulag area]. 
      Unhurried they float. 
      They're warm, I bet, those clouds, 
      But I've been frozen through forever!
    
      Like a horseshoe I froze into the sleigh tracks, 
      Into the ice I was chipping with my pick! 
      After all, not for nothing 
      I blew away 20 years in those camps.
    
      I still have that snow crust before my eyes! 
      I still have the din of frisking in my ears! 
      Hey, bring me a pineapple 
      And another 200 g. of cognac!
    
      The clouds float by, the clouds, 
      Floating to Kolyma [a work camp] that dear old place, 
      And they don't need a lawyer, 
      An amnesty's neither here nor there.
    
      Me too, I live a first-rate life! 
      Twenty years I swapped for one day! 
      And I sit in this bar like a lord, 
      I've even got some teeth left!
    
      The clouds float off to the east, 
      They've no pension, no worries. 
      Me, on the fourth, I get a money order, 
      And another on the 23rd.
    
      And on those days, just like me. 
      Half the country sits in the bars! 
      And in our memory off to those places 
      Float the clouds, the clouds.
    

Translation taken from Smith, Gerald Stanton. (1984). Songs to Seven Strings:
Russian Guitar Poetry and Soviet Mass Song. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press. 195-196.

------
pmoriarty
Anyone interested in this would do well to read Victor Frankl's _" Man's
Search For Meaning"_ about his imprisonment in Auschwitz.[1] He found that a
sense of meaning was critical to survival there, and went on to develop a new
school of psychotherapy he called "logotherapy", which focused on finding
meaning in life.[2]

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-
Frankl/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-
Frankl/dp/080701429X/)

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logotherapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logotherapy)

~~~
ryanstorm
I picked this up on a recommendation similar to yours and I now consider it
one of the most important books I've read.

------
archagon
If anyone wants the original:
[https://shalamov.ru/library/29/](https://shalamov.ru/library/29/)

~~~
zczc
Strangely, #5 from the original is missing from the English text:

"5\. I have understood the difference between the prison strengthening
character and the camp depraving human soul"

------
megous
Perhaps 7. is one reason for the religious radicalisation thriving in prisons.

------
imbokodo
A good book on prison lessons is Soledad Brother by George Jackson, a black
man who was imprisoned in Soledad Prison, California, USA. He was killed by a
guard at San Quentin in 1971.

~~~
jackfoxy
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Jackson_(activist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Jackson_\(activist\))

------
oblio
> 44\. I understood that moving from the condition of a prisoner to the
> condition of a free man is very difficult, almost impossible without a long
> period of amortization.

------
sidcool
Reminds me of Victor Frankl's book, Man's search for meaning. Very profound.

~~~
kgwgk
Primo Levi wrote three books about his experience at Auschwitz. The last one
(The Drowned and the Saved) is centered on the "philosofical" issues.

[https://theorangutanlibrarian.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/grapp...](https://theorangutanlibrarian.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/grappling-
with-the-drowned-and-the-saved/)

"Though of a similar nature and sharing the same subject matter (Auschwitz and
the Holocaust), Frankl’s book is one of the most uplifting reads I’ve ever
experienced. Victor Frankl more than just physically survived the war; Primo
Levi on the other hand felt like a different story. Put simply: Levi is the
darkness to Frankl’s light."

------
omginternets
>I understood why prisoners hear political news (arrests, et cetera) before
the outside world does.

What does this mean?

~~~
alfredallan1
When someone politically notable gets thrown in the prison system, word of it
gets around within the prison communities straight away. The official version
released to the press has to go through officials and PR people, and arrives a
bit later.

------
ctack
> 38\. I realized what a terrible thing is the self-esteem of a boy or a
> youth: it’s better to steal than to ask. That self-esteem and boastfulness
> are what make boys sink to the bottom.

Sounds like start up culture. Move fast and break things. Better to do than to
ask permission.

~~~
scottLobster
Only superficially.

"Better to do than ask permission" long predates startup culture and often
holds just as true in large corporations. Especially true in fact, often
there's a lot of red tape that people won't bother to enforce if you can
present a working solution in the correct manner.

"Move fast and break things" largely means "grow quickly enough that you're
breaking stuff", which may or may not be a positive.

Contrast that to choosing to steal another inmate's food instead of asking,
because it would be too humiliating to ask or trade. All that's going to do is
make you enemies, and reveals an underlying character weakness that will
probably hurt you in other ways.

~~~
jschwartzi
I prefer Grace Hopper's version, "It is often easier to ask for forgiveness
than to ask for permission."

~~~
agumonkey
it's very true, but one might add "if you're acting for the general good", not
if you're only trying to have fun or disrupt social fabric

------
TimTheTinker
> I saw that the only group of people able to preserve a minimum of humanity
> in conditions of starvation and abuse were the religious believers, the
> sectarians (almost all of them), and most priests.

I’m curious which religions were represented, and what he meant by
“sectarians”. Christianity at least would seem to be implied (by “priests”)
and the fact that this was a Soviet gulag — Christians in particular were
strongly persecuted under the USSR. (Perhaps at least partly because they
resisted ideological assimilation more strongly than any other groups — even
to death and martyrdom in many cases.)

It’s also very interesting that military and party members were the first to
lose it. No wonder communists feared and/or hated religion — they knew their
own ideology couldn’t strengthen people or hold them in its grip anywhere near
as well.

~~~
DylanDmitri
Mostly Russian Orthodox. Sectarians were also russian orthodox but also
members of these psuedo-monastic religious orders that were popular at the
time.

~~~
Fins
Baptists, pentecostals and other non-traditional denominations are usually
termed as sects in Russian/Soviet usage. Old Believers (schismatic Orthodox)
would be included too.

------
deepsun
> The extreme fragility of human culture, civilization. A man becomes a beast
> in three weeks, given heavy labor, cold, hunger, and beatings.

I remember hearing that from some Czech artist -- he said it was very
surprising to see that all the civilized culture we have can be wiped out in
just two weeks. What's so bad in stealing, lying, raping, murdering for food?

He learned to respect that fragile balance of culture we built over animal
human nature.

~~~
taneq
“There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy” - Alfred Henry Lewis

~~~
quickthrower2
If you have a 3 year old:

"There is only 1/2 a meal between mankind and anarchy"

~~~
Jaruzel
After reading the article, I needed that laugh. Thanks! :)

------
mlechha
>7\. I saw that the only group of people able to preserve a minimum of
humanity in conditions of starvation and abuse were the religious believers,
the sectarians (almost all of them), and most priests.

This, to me is the point of religion. We need religion when things are hard
and unpredictable. In a world where most things are certain and predictable,
religion has no value.

~~~
ekianjo
> In a world where most things are certain and predictable, religion has no
> value.

Not much is predictable in your life.

~~~
heavenlyblue
The more white and privileged you are - the more predictable your life is.

~~~
konart
And then - BAM! You've (or someone from your relatives) got cancer. Or
something.

 _\- True, man is mortal, but that is itself only half the evil. The trouble
is that man is sometimes suddenly mortal, that 's the tricky part! Basically,
he can never say what will happen to him this evening.

'What an idiotic way of putting it...” thought Berlioz, and objected:

\- Certainly, that is an exaggeration. I know more or less exactly what will
happen this evening. Of course, if a brick falls on my head on Bronnaya...

\- Bricks are out of the question, - the stranger broke him off sharply, - not
a single brick will ever fall on anybody's head. Under no circumstances, I
assure you, does this constitute a threat. You will die a different death.

\- And perhaps you know just which? - inquired Berlioz with the most natural
irony, he had clearly been drawn into some kind of absurd conversation, - and
can tell me?

\- Certainly, - responded the stranger. He measured Berlioz with his gaze, as
if he were sewing him a suit, and mumbled through his teeth, something like:
'One, two... Mercury in the second house... the moon is down... six -
misfortune... evening - seven...” - then he loudly and delightedly proclaimed:
- You'll have your head cut off!”_

\- The Master and Margarita. Mikhail Bulgakov.

~~~
heavenlyblue
If a rich person's got cancer - he'll be able to pay off his dying and live in
acceptable conditions before he passes.

While someone poor would probably end up being unable to pay for his
painkillers and dying while praying to his relatives so that someone killed
him not to endure his death.

So no, rich people do have a better ability to hedge their risks.

~~~
konart
This has nothing to do with the initial statement though.

Not to mention that the result is the same anyway.

>live in acceptable conditions before he passes.

And no, this is not as simple as you are trying to picture. Sometimes - yes,
you can deal with it this way, in many other scenarios painkillers and other
shit is not enough and the only way to stop the suffering is either forced
coma or suicide.

------
mrobot
I don't know that much about the Soviet Union. This guy was basically sent to
prison for 'participating in “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities.' I
have been following some leftist stuff and saw this article recently by
Trotsky. It is called "Hitler the Pacifist" and starts out "Hitler wants
peace." Trotsky didn't seem like that good of a guy, but i haven't read that
much about him yet. In any case here is the article:

[https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1933/11/pacifist.ht...](https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1933/11/pacifist.htm)

~~~
ptaipale
If you know anything about the GULAG, you know that people sent there as
"counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activists" very often did not have anything
to do with counter-revolutionary activist, or Trotsky, or anything. Very often
it was just being unlucky, and even then, they strongly believed in the Soviet
system, they just thought there was some clerical error, and tried to appeal
to higher leader to have those errors fixed - without understanding the point
of the Terror.

Most people eventually did understand, of course.

~~~
Cadabrum
And... The point of the Terror was ..?

~~~
ptaipale
Stalin's regime maintained its citizens in a state of fear and uncertainty to
stay in power.

------
symlock
> 22\. I saw that women are more decent and self-sacrificing than men

The majority of men love themselves while women love others. Men will
sacrifice for themselves. Women will sacrifice for others.

Why? Is it global culture teaching a woman from birth her life is about
others? A husband and kids? While teaching men that their value is in their
work, their job, their income, their power?

~~~
djschnei
If I had to make an admittedly uneducated guess, I bet females being more
self-sacrificing than men can be seen across species. It would only make sense
that the sex generally responsible for child-rearing would be the sex most
likely to self-sacrifice.

I know nowadays, especially in the tech scene, it is frowned upon to suggest
intrinsic differences between the sexes and to imply those differences can
affect behavior at a statistical level, but with this fascinating historical
context, it's an interesting thought.

~~~
silveroriole
Funny, if anything I’d say it would make more sense for females to be LESS
self-sacrificing across species. Surely evolutionarily it is more important
that females get enough resources to survive; males should self-sacrifice to
enable that. And of course there are also lots of stereotypes about women
being selfish, wilful, demanding etc. Not sure the one about them being self-
sacrificing is any more true than that.

~~~
n4r9
That reasoning might work at a species level, but natural selection acts at a
genetic level. I think the idea is that females need to be self-sacrificing to
ensure that their offspring (and hence their genes) have a decent chance of
survival. Males might devote a certain amount of resources to the same, but it
soon becomes more advantageous to go and try to impregnate another female with
their genes.

~~~
belorn
I can highly recommend Behavioral evolution and in particular robert sapolsky
writings, but to give a summery, a common categorization in behavioral
evolution is pair-bonding species vs tournament species.

In tournament species it is the observed strategy of males to devote as little
as possible on offspring and to maximize impregnate as many females as
possible, while the female strategy is to maximize the gene quality as that is
the only contribution to the success that the male gives to the offspring (and
the continuation of her genes if one view natural selection to be about the
continuation of genes). Males tend to be large then females, and usually
evolve disadvantaging traits for survival in favor of traits that increase
competitiveness against other males. A typical example would be Elephant
seals. Common traits among tournament species is a large difference life
expectancy among male and females, and only a short portion of the male
population that successfully reproduce.

Pair-bonding species create a balance where both the male and female spend
approximation the same amount of energy (resources) on offspring. A big
benefit is the extra insurance that two parents provide, and there is a
directly associated chance for twins in pair-bonding species. A typical
example is most birds who spend approximating similar amount building nest,
brooding, collecting food and feeding the offspring. Many people think when
they see a bird sitting on eggs that it must be the female, or when one is
carrying nest material that it must be the male, but that is just us
projecting our culture onto nature.

And to answer the question on where humans fit in this categorization, the
answer is somewhere in the middle and it is unclear why we have not settled on
a single strategy.

~~~
n4r9
Thanks. If I remember rightly this is also touched on in the Selfish Gene,
though it's been over a decade since I read that.

------
rich-and-poor

      7. I saw that the only group of people able to preserve a 
      minimum of humanity in conditions of starvation and abuse 
      were the religious believers, the sectarians (almost all of 
      them), and most priests.
    
      29. Russians’ uncontrollable urge to denounce and complain.
    

A warning for those who loudly denounce Western society as a great tyrannical
patriarchy, who wish to replace the old culture. Be wary of complaining,
denouncing, secular men and women.

~~~
courtf
Eh, kind of a stretch. Religion is not a purely Western invention, and you're
reading what you want to in #29.

~~~
rich-and-poor
I admit it is not a precise argument, but eradicating religion & denouncing
your nation's culture as a tyrannical, oppressive force were the two major
ingredients for the revolution that led to the slaughter of 60 million
Russians. The two motivations that led to the communist revolution are alive
and well in our present culture.

~~~
mikeash
Wheat and gunpowder were also major ingredients in the revolution. The fact
that the revolution was anti-religion tells us nothing about the wisdom of
being anti-religion, any more than the Crusades tell us about the wisdom of
being religious.

~~~
remarkEon
>The fact that the revolution was anti-religion...

It's more helpful to think of Communism as just another kind of religion.

~~~
mikeash
Indeed. The structures are more or less the same, just the names change.

~~~
remarkEon
It has a lot of the same narrative structures, yes, and there’s lots of
symbology and people playing the roles of High Priests etc. Of course, so does
consumerist Capitalism. The symbology there is just corporate symbology
coupled with dogmatic adherence to “free markets”.

------
forapurpose
Let's recall that there are people living these experiences and worse, right
this moment, in Gulags in North Korea (and possibly other places I'm not
thinking of).

~~~
Muromec
One doesn't need to go to NK for that. Modern Russian state still tortures
political dissidents in prisons even now. Not in large-scale labor-camps, just
because it is not that necessary.

And they still send people to frozen shitholes to fuck them over. ref:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Sentsov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Sentsov)

~~~
helloindia
And the re-education camps in China.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-
educatio...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-education-
camps.html)

~~~
wallace_f
Of course we wouldn't mention CIA black sites, the possibility of more Abu
Ghraibs, or even those in the US allowed to be beaten, killed or tortured at
the hands of other prisoners, guards, or even police.

~~~
TimTheTinker
Communist dictators and other ideological authoritarians in political power
(who demand assimilation) are orders of magnitude more murderous and deadly
than US torture places, bad as those may be.

~~~
wallace_f
Yes that's absolutely true. We here in the US are nowhere near as bad as China
or Russia, but we better keep an eye on it because we seem to be the exception
--something special--in history.

~~~
DmenshunlAnlsis
The US is pretty bad, if you consider all of the wars from Korea, Vietnam,
Iraq, Iraq, Afghanistan, all,of the CIA activities in South and Central
America, the impact of drug prohibition, Racist policing and slavery and de
facto slavery via prison labor (and the largest prison population). I think
you could strangle a gnat on the different in ruined and lost lives between
Russia, China, and America.

~~~
TimTheTinker
All that may be bad, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Mao Zedong (49-78 million
civilians killed) and Josef Stalin (23 million civilians killed).

Hitler himself ranks _third_ behind those two, at 17 million civilians killed.

~~~
DmenshunlAnlsis
Not as bad as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao... could the bar be any lower? If the
only way you compare favorably is considering the greatest mass killers of the
last century, that should tell you something.

------
ramblerman
> I saw that the only group of people able to preserve a minimum of humanity
> in conditions of starvation and abuse were the religious believers, the
> sectarians (almost all of them), and most priests.

I am an atheist and don't need religion to tell me it is wrong to kill another
man, or so I've always believed.

This makes me think about the value of religion in our troubled history, and
in shaping our culture.

Because would I still be moral if I hadn't eaten for 5 days? I'm not sure.

~~~
liotier
> I am an atheist and don't need religion to tell me it is wrong to kill
> another man

You do - but religion can be non-theistic. As an atheist, you nevertheless
strive towards ideals that have ultimately no reason but your belief in
them... That is religion - it is personal and it does not require supernatural
beings.

~~~
mehwoot
_ideals that have ultimately no reason but your belief in them_

It's a pretty big claim that ethics has "no reason but your belief in it".
There are plenty of logical reasons why one would want to behave ethically,
even self interest, beyond you simply believing it.

~~~
carlmr
That self interest is usually rooted in how society would react to your
behavior. So in the end if it's society basing the idea that something is
immoral on religion, you're still indirectly basing it on religion.

~~~
JohnStrangeII
I don't want to defend a naturalistic perspective on morals, which is
unfortunately popular nowadays and leads to a lot of immorality, but there
_are_ definitely bio-logical reasons for not killing others in your group.
Humans are altruistic, group-based apes whose survival depends on
collaboration. Originally, this might have been small groups only. Today
society is based on the collaboration between (nearly all) nations, because
modern technology and labour division would break down entirely within about
six weeks without massive global trade and shipping.

There are also some moral principles that follow directly from factual
matters, provided some very basic first assumptions are made. Theories of just
resource distribution and social justice are of that kind. The principles that
get things going are very basic, e.g. reciprocity, generality of moral
statements, and fairness in the sense of trade/bargaining/exchange fairness
get you very far.

It is a myth that religion provides values, as it can be shown very easily by
historical comparison that it never has. The values defended by major
religions such as Christianity and Islam have changed over the centuries again
and again. Modern Christian values, for instance, mostly come from the
enlightenment movement and were not endorsed at all earlier. (Christianity is
just an example, AFAIK this is true for all religions.)

Churches and 'holy men' have always had a vested interest in selling their
values as a product of their religion, though, and they are very good at
selling this false story to the public.

~~~
trashtester
I'm curious: What "first assumptions" do refer to as "very basic"?

Also, for the final paragraph: Your theory of religion seems to be based on
intelligent design. I think it is more accurate (and less prone to conspiracy
theories) to think of the evolution of religious memes in darwinist terms of
"natural" selection.

~~~
JohnStrangeII
The Principle of Reciprocity, the No Harm Principle, and Democratic Power
Division.

------
Fins
Kolyma Stories is probably the best book about the reality of communism.

~~~
anticodon
It's a one-sided and highly exaggerated view.

~~~
pvg
It's pretty hard to cover whatever the other side is when you're stuck in a
prison camp. Not sure in what way it's 'exaggerated', though. The worse stuff,
nobody was left to write about.

~~~
anticodon
Parent comment was saying that these are the books to read if you want to know
life under communist rule. I wanted to say that it's not true. This kind of
literature describe only a small part of a life.

Not everybody was living in a prison camp in USSR, not even a majority of the
population. This kind of literature was funded and promoted by the West
because it supports the western society discourse.

Person who judges life in USSR by these kind of books will have a very skewed
opinion.

~~~
cwyers
> This kind of literature was funded and promoted by the West because it
> supports the western society discourse.

I mean, I'd agree that the material is a thin slice of the society, but come
on. These are real personal narratives of people who lived through these
experiences. The implication that "the West" is why these books exist, not
just why we're able to read them, is absurd.

~~~
jhbadger
There was real injustice, but it is important to also realize the vast
usefulness these narratives had to the West (and in more recent times
descriptions of the injustice of Saddam Hussein's Iraq were used in part to
justify his overthrow). And conversely, the Soviets published many
descriptions of the horrors of the Jim Crow US South for similar reasons.

~~~
pvg
_Soviets published many descriptions of the horrors of the Jim Crow US South
for similar reasons._

Can you think of some that weren't, I dunno, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' or Huck Finn?
The notion that a survivor's memoir like Shalamov's is some kind of Western
plot was absurd in its time and plainly disgusting now.

~~~
jhbadger
I'm talking about _contemporary_ descriptions of US racism during the Soviet
period. Things like lynching of black men because they supposedly looked at a
white woman and the murder of civil rights leaders like MLK jr. These
obviously were terrible things, but why were they reported in Russian? To make
Soviet citizens feel that their land was morally superior. And likewise with
Gulag literature in the West. It's easier to complain that your neighbors'
house is dirty than to clean your own.

~~~
pvg
_And likewise with Gulag literature in the West._

No no no no no no. How do you jump from one to the other? That's like saying
Anne Frank's diary's credibility is tainted by the injustice of the internment
of US citizens of Japanese ancestry.

