Gulag (86 page)

Like the official prisoner statistics, the table also shows some patterns which can be reconciled with other data. The sudden spike in 1933, for example, surely represents the impact of the famine which killed six to seven million “free” Soviet citizens as well. The smaller rise in 1938 must reflect the mass executions which took place in some camps that year. The major rise in death rates during the war—nearly a quarter of prisoners in 1942— also tallies with the memoirs and recollections of people who lived through the camps in that year, and reflects the wider food shortages throughout the USSR.

Yet even if and when these numbers are improved, the question “How many died?” will still be difficult to answer with ease. In truth, no death figures compiled by Gulag authorities can ever be considered completely reliable. The culture of camp inspection and reprimand meant, among other things, that individual camp commanders had a vested interest in lying about how many of their prisoners died: both archives and memoirs indicate that it was common practice in many camps to release prisoners who were on the point of dying, thereby lowering camp death statistics.
¹⁷
Although exiles moved around less frequently, and were not released when half-dead, the nature of the exile system—prisoners lived in distant villages, far from regional authorities—means that statistics on exile death rates can never be considered completely reliable either.

More important, however, the question itself has to be asked a bit more carefully. “How many died?” is in fact an imprecise question, in the case of the Soviet Union, and those who ask such a question should first consider what it is that they really want to know. Do they want to know, for example, simply how many died in the camps of the Gulag and in the exile villages in the Stalinist era, from 1929 to 1953? If so, a number based on archival sources is available, although even the historian who compiled it points out that it is incomplete, and does not cover all categories of prisoner in every year. Again, I reluctantly cite it: 2,749,163.
¹⁸

Even if it were complete, however, this figure still would not reflect all of the victims of the Stalinist judicial system. As I say in the Introduction, the Soviet secret police did not, for the most part, use their camps in order to kill people. When they wanted to kill people, they carried out mass executions in forests: surely these are victims of Soviet justice too, and there were many of them. Using archives, one set of researchers cites a figure of 786,098 political executions from 1934 to 1953.
¹⁹
Most historians consider this more or less plausible, but the haste and chaos which accompanied mass executions may well mean that we will never know. Yet even this number— which, in my view, is actually too precise to be reliable—still does not include those who died on the trains to the camps; those who died during interrogation; those whose executions were not technically “political” but were nevertheless carried out on spurious grounds; the more than 20,000 Polish officers who died in the Katyn massacres; and, most of all, those who died within a few days of release. If that is the number we really want, then it will be higher—probably far higher—although estimates will again vary greatly.

But even these numbers, I’ve found, do not always provide the answer to what people really want to know. Much of the time, when I am asked “How many died?” what the questioner really wants to know is how many people died, unnecessarily, as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution. That is, how many died in the Red Terror and the Civil War, the famines which followed in the wake of the brutal policy of collectivization, the mass deportations, the mass executions, the camps of the 1920s, the camps of the 1960s through the 1980s—as well as in the camps and mass murders of Stalin’s reign. In that case, the numbers are not only far larger, but they really are a matter of pure conjecture. The French authors of
The Black Book of
Communism
quote a figure of twenty million deaths. Others cite numbers closer to ten or twelve million.
²⁰

A single round number of dead victims would be extremely satisfying, particularly since it would allow us to compare Stalin directly with Hitler or with Mao. Yet even if we could find one, I’m not sure it would really tell the whole story of suffering either. No official figures, for example, can possibly reflect the mortality of the wives and children and aging parents left behind, since their deaths were not recorded separately. During the war, old people starved to death without ration cards: had their convict son not been digging coal in Vorkuta, they might have lived. Small children succumbed easily to epidemics of typhus and measles in cold, ill-equipped orphanages: had their mothers not been sewing uniforms in Kengir, they might have lived too.

Nor can any figures reflect the cumulative impact of Stalin’s repressions on the life and health of whole families. A man was tried and shot as an “enemy of the people”; his wife was taken to a camp as a “member of an enemy’s family”; his children grew up in orphanages and joined criminal gangs; his mother died of stress and grief; his cousins and aunts and uncles cut off all contact from one another, in order to avoid being tainted as well. Families broke apart, friendships ended, fear weighed heavily on those who remained behind, even when they did not die.

In the end, statistics can never fully describe what happened. Neither can the archival documents upon which so much of this book has been based. All of those who have written most eloquently on the subject of the Gulag have known this to be true—which is why I would like to give one of them the last word on the subject of “statistics” and “archives” and “files.”

In 1990, the writer Lev Razgon was allowed to see his own archival file, a thin collection of documents describing his arrest and the arrests of his first wife, Oksana, as well as several members of her family. He read through it, and later wrote an essay on its contents. He reflected eloquently on the contents of the file; on the sparsity of the evidence; on the ludicrous nature of the charges; on the tragedy which befell his wife’s mother; on the opaque motives of his father-in-law, the Chekist Gleb Boky; on the strange absence of repentance on the part of those who had destroyed all of them. But what struck me most about his experience of working in the archives was his description of how ambivalent he felt when he had finished reading:

I have long since stopped turning the pages of the file and they have lain next to me for more than an hour or two, growing cold with their own thoughts. My guardian [the KGB archivist] is already beginning to cough suggestively and look at his watch. It’s time to go. I have nothing more to do here. I hand over the files and they are negligently dropped again into the shopping bag. I go downstairs, along the empty corridors, past the sentries who do not even ask to see my papers, and step out into Lubyanka Square.

It’s only 5 p.m., but it is already almost dark and a fine, quiet rain falls uninterruptedly. The building remains beside me and I stand on the pavement outside, wondering what to do next. How terrible that I do not believe in God and cannot go into some quiet little church, stand in the warmth of the candles, gaze into the eyes of Christ on the Cross and say and do those things that make life easier to bear for the believer . . .

I take off my fur hat, and drops of rain or tears trickle down my face. I am eighty-two and here I stand, living through it all again . . . I hear the voices of Oksana and her mother . . . I can remember and recall them, each one. And if I remained alive, then it is my duty to do so . . .
²¹

NOTES

Full details of published and unpublished memoirs, works of literature, reference, archives, and interviews cited in the Notes in abbreviated form can be found in the relevant section of the Bibliography. All references to memoirs are to the English translated version, except for where the Russian title of a work is given.

Introduction

1. Quoted in Cohen, p. 39.

2. Leggett, pp. 102–20.

3. Okhotin and Roginsky.

4. See Appendix for a fuller discussion of these statistics.

5. Rigoulot,
Les Paupières Lourdes
, pp. 1–10.

6. Quoted in Johnson, p. 243.

7. Quoted in Revel, p. 77.

8. Amis; John Lloyd, “Show Trial: The Left in the Dock,”
New Statesman
, September 2, 2002, vol. 15, issue 722, pp. 12–15; “Hit and Miss,”
Guardian
, September 3, 20.

9. Thurston,
Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia
; Robert Conquest, “Small Terror, Few Dead,”
The Times Literary Supplement
, May 31, 1996.

10. This happened to the author in 1994. The phrase “too anti-Soviet” is a direct quote from a letter. A different publication,
The Times Literary Supplement
, eventually ran a much shortened version of the review.

11. “Neither Here nor There” (review of
Between East and West
, New York, 1994),
The New
York Times Book Review
, December 18, 1994.

12. For a full discussion of this issue see Malia.

13. Webb, p. 31.

14. Quoted in Conquest,
The Great Terror
, p. 465.

15. See Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov; and Klehr, Haynes, and Anderson, for the archival history of the American Communist Party.

16. Quoted in N. Tolstoy,
Stalin’s Secret War
, p. 289.

17. See Thomas, pp. 489–95; and Scammell,
Solzhenitsyn: A Biography
, for details. The attempt to portray Solzhenitsyn as an alcoholic (Scammell, pp. 664–65) was particularly clumsy, since he was known for his dislike of alcohol.

18. Pipes, pp. 824–25.

19. Overy, pp. 112 and 226–27; Moskoff.

20. L. Ginzburg, p. 36.

21. Kozhina, p. 5.

22.
, p. 15.

23. Kennan, pp. 74–83.

24. Chekhov, p. 371.

25.
, pp. 16–27.

26. Popov, pp. 31–38.

27. Kennan, p. 242.

28.
, p. 65–85.

29. Anisimov, p. 177.

30. GARF, 9414/1/76.

31.
, pp. 44–64.

32. Ibid., p. 161.

33. Chekhov, p. 52.

34.
, pp. 161–74.

35. Sutherland, pp. 271–302.

36. Adams, pp. 4–11.

37. Volkogonov,
Stalin
, p. 9.

38. This photograph appears, among other places, in Figes.

39. This photograph appears in Volkogonov,
Trotsky.

40. Bullock, pp. 28–45.

41. Volkogonov,
Stalin
, p. 9.

42. Kotek and Rigoulot, pp. 97–107; Okhotin and Roginsky, pp. 11–12.

43. I elaborated upon this definition in a “A History of Horror.”

44. Geller, p. 43.

45. Quoted in Kotek and Rigoulot, p. 92.

46. This account of the prehistory of concentration camps comes from Kotek and Rigoulot, pp. 1–94.

47.
, pp. 270–85.

48. L. Tolstoy, pp. 408–12.

49. See Martin,
The Affirmative Action Empire
, for a full discussion of Stalin’s attitude toward “enemy” ethnic groups.

50. Arendt, pp. 122–23.

51. Bullock, p. 24.

52. Weiner, “Nature, Nurture and Memory in a Socialist Utopia.”

53. Bullock, p. 488.

54. Sereny, p. 101.

55. I am grateful to Terry Martin for helping me to clarify this point.

56. Shreider, p. 5.

57. Lynne Viola makes this point about kulak exiles.

58. See Applebaum, “A History of Horror,” for more details.

Part One: The Origins of the Gulag, 1917–1939

1: Bolshevik Beginnings

1. From
Stekla vechnosti
, pp. 172–73.

2. Likhachev,
Vospominania
, p. 118.

3. Pipes, pp. 336–37.

4. See, for example, Service,
Lenin.

5. Pipes, pp. 439–505; Figes, pp. 474–551.

6. Geller, pp. 23 and 24.

7. Jakobson, pp. 18–26.

8.
Dekrety
, vol. II, pp. 241–42, and vol. III, p. 80. Also Geller, p. 10; Pipes, pp. 793–800.

9. Jakobson, pp. 18–26; Decree “On Revolutionary Tribunals,” in
Sbornik
, December 19, 1917, pp. 9–10.

10. Hoover, Melgunov Collection, Box 1, Folder 63.

11. Okhotin and Roginsky, p. 13.

12. RGASPI, 76/3/1 and 13.

13. Jakobson, pp. 10–17; Okhotin and Roginsky, pp. 10–24.

14.
Dekrety
, vol. I, p. 401.

15. Hoover, Melgunov Collection, Box 1, Folder 4.

16. Anonymous,
Vo vlasti Gubcheka
, pp. 3–11.

17. Hoover, Melgunov Collection, Box 1, Folder 4.

18. Lockhart, pp. 326–45.

19. S. G. Eliseev, “Tyuremnyi dnevnik,” in Uroki, pp. 17–19.

20. Okhotin and Roginsky, p. 11.

21. Geller, p. 43.

22. Ibid., p. 44; Leggett, p. 103.

23. Initially, the Cheka were put in charge of the camps in conjunction with the Central Collegium for War Prisoners and Refugees (
Tsentroplenbezh
)
.
Okhotin and Roginskii, p. 11.

24. Leggett, p. 108.

25. Decree “On Red Terror,” in
Sbornik
, September 5, 1918, p. 11.

26. Ivanova,
Labor Camp Socialism
, p. 13.

27.
Istorichesky Arkhiv
, no. 1, 1958, pp. 6–11; Geller, p. 52.

28. According to the historian Richard Pipes, Lenin did not want his name associated with these first camps, which is why the decrees were issued not by the
Sovnarkom
, a body he chaired, but by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets (Pipes, p. 834).

29. Dekrety, vol. V, pp. 69–70 and 174–81.

30. RGASPI, 76/3/65.

31. Hoover, Melgunov Collection, Box 11, Folder 63.

32. Anonymous,
Vo vlasti Gubcheka
, pp. 47–53.

33. Izgoev, p. 36.

34. Bunyan, pp. 54–65.

35. Geller, pp. 55–64; Bunyan, pp. 54–114.

36. Okhotin and Roginsky, pp. 11–12; see also Jakobson for a full account of the institutional changes in the 1920s, as well as Lin.

37. RGASPI, 17/84/585.

38. For examples of these discussions see Hoover, Fond 89, 73/25, 26, and 27.

39. Volkogonov,
Lenin
, p. 179.

40. Service,
Lenin
, p. 186.

41. Hoover, Nicolaevsky Collection, Box 9, Folder 1.

42. Ibid., Box 99; RGASPI, Fond 76/3/87;
Genrikh Yagoda
, p. 265.

43. Razgon, p. 266.

44. Hoover, Nicolaevsky Collection, Box 99.

45. Ibid.

46.
Letters from Russian Prisons
, pp. 1–15.

47. Ibid., pp. 20–28.

48. Ibid., pp. 162–65.

49. Ibid.; Melnik and Soshina.

50.
Letters from Russian Prisons
, pp. 162–65.

51. Melnik and Soshina.

52. RGASPI, 17/84/395.

53. Doloi.

54. Guberman, pp. 72–74.

55. Bertha Babina-Nevskaya, “My First Prison, February 1922,” in Vilensky,
Till My Tale Is
Told
, pp. 97–109.

56. RGASPI, 76/3/149.

57. RGASPI, 76/3/227; Hoover, Fond 89, 73/25, 26, and 27.

2: “The First Camp of the Gulag”

1.
Ekran
, no. 12, March 27, 1926.

2. For a description of the geography of Solovetsky, the various islands, and their development, see Melnik, Soshina, Reznikova, and Reznikov.

3. “Solovetskaya monastyrskaya tyurma,” Solovetskoe Obshchestvo Kraevedeniya,
Vypusk
, VII, 1927 (SKM).

4. Ivan Bogov,
Izvestiya Arkhgubrevkoma i arkhbubkoma RKP (b)
, May 4, 1920 (SKM); also quoted in Juri Brodsky, p. 13.

5. GARF, 5446/1/2. See also Nasedkin’s reference to Dzerzhinsky in GARF, 9414/1/77.

6. For example, see Solzhenitsyn,
The Gulag Archipelago
, vol. II, pp. 25–70.