KOLYMA

During their non-working hours, prisoners typically lived in a camp zone surrounded by
a fence or barbed wire, overlooked by armed guards in watch towers. The zone
contained a number of overcrowded, stinking, poorly-heated barracks. Life in a camp
zone was brutal and violent. Prisoners competed for access to all of lifes necessities, and
violence among the prisoners was commonplace. If they survived hunger, disease, the
harsh elements, heavy labor, and their fellow prisoners, they might succumb to arbitrary
violence at the hands of camp guards. All the while, prisoners were watched by
informersfellow prisoners always looking for some misstep to report to Gulag
authorities.
Jacques Rossi, the artist who made the following drawings in the 1960s based on his
memories, spent 19 years in the Gulag after he was arrested in the Stalin purges of 193637. He later published several writings, including his most important, The Gulag
Handbook, in 1987 (published in English in 1989).
--

The Gulag was conceived in order to transform human matter into a docile, exhausted,
ill-smelling mass of individuals living only for themselves and thinking of nothing else
but how to appease the constant torture of hunger, living in the instant, concerned with
nothing apart from evading kicks, cold and ill treatment.
[in line with perverse understanding and manipulation of the docrine of equality in
communism]J

A lesson to learn: How to distribute your body on the planks trying to avoid excessive
suffering? A position on your back means all your bones are in direct painful contact
with wood... To sleep on your belly is equally uncomfortable. Until you sleep on your
right side with your left knee pushed against your chest, you counterbalance the weight
of your left hip and relieve the right side of your rib cage. You leave your right arm
along the body, and put your right... cheekbone against the back of your left hand.
There is nothing you can do to protect yourself against cold.=thin sweaters.
Paika. Ration. Prisoners in the Gulag received food according to how much work they
did. A full ration barely provided enough food for survival. If a prisoner did not fulfill
his daily work quota, he received even less food. If a prisoner consistently failed to
fulfill his work quotas, he would slowly starve to death.
Goners were extremely emaciated prisoners on the verge of death from starvation. Their
presence constantly reminded prisoners of their potential fate if they failed to fulfill work
quotas and thus were deprived of their full food rations.
Varlam Shalamov

Russian author who was imprisoned in the Gulag for more than 20 years. He wrote the
celebrated Kolyma Tales, a series of short stories based on his life in the Gulag.

"Each time they brought in the soup... it made us all want to cry. We were ready to
cry for fear that the soup would be thin. And when a miracle occurred and the soup
was thick we couldnt believe it and ate it as slowly as possible. But even with thick
soup in a warm stomach there remained a sucking pain; wed been hungry for too
long. All human emotionslove, friendship, envy, concern for ones fellow man,
compassion, longing for fame, honestyhad left us with the flesh that had melted
from our bodies...
[J:One couldnt write,or think,or create,or be in any way different than the other,or better of,or any
opportunity to rise,they wanted them to be sheeps,they wanted total subjection,to kill,eliminate any
form of individuality,they wanted human beings to be animals,or machines,and they stalin
,lennin,the so call leaders of totaliarism,wanted to be GOD.]No one under their rule could afford to
contemplate of writin or art,because only if ones basic needs were assuaged,could one think,or
write or create.
Only after time had distanced them from the experience could they look back,and ponder.

Between 1934 and 1941, the number of prisoners with higher education increased more
than eight times, and the number of prisoners with high education increased five times. It
resulted in their increased share in the overall composition of the camp prisoners.
Among the camp prisoners, the number and share of the intelligentsia was growing at the
quickest pace. Distrust, hostility, and even hatred for the intelligentsia is a common
characteristic of the communist leaders. After having laid hold of unlimited power, they,
as practice has shown, were simply unable to resist the temptation to mock the
intelligentsia. The Stalin version of mocking the intelligentsia was the referral of its part
to the Gulag on the basis of far-fetched or fabricated charges. For unrepressed part of the
intelligentsia, the mockery was prepared in the form of ideological dressing down,
leading and guiding instructions from above on how to think, do, worship the
leaders, etc