Anne applebaum gulag a history (v5 0)

Table of Contents Title Page Dedication Acknowledgments Praise Introduction PART ONE - THE ORIGINS OF THE GULAG, 1917—1939 Chapter - BOLSHEVIK BEGINNINGS Chapter - “THE FIRST CAMP OF THE GULAG” Chapter - 1929: THE GREAT TURNING POINT Chapter - THE WHITE SEA CANAL Chapter - THE CAMPS EXPAND Chapter - THE GREAT TERROR AND ITS AFTERMATH PART TWO - LIFE AND WORK IN THE CAMPS Chapter - ARREST Chapter - PRISON Chapter - TRANSPORT, ARRIVAL, SELECTION Chapter 10 - LIFE IN THE CAMPS ZONA: WITHIN THE BARBED WIRE REZHIM: RULES FOR LIVING BARAKI: LIVING SPACE BANYA: THE BATHHOUSE STOLOVAYA: THE DINING HALL Chapter11 - WORK IN THE CAMPS RABOCHAYA ZONA: THE WORK ZONE KVCh: THE CULTURAL-EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT Chapter 12 - PUNISHMENT AND REWARD SHIZO: PUNISHMENT CELLS POCHTOVYI YASHCHIK: POST OFFICE BOX DOM SVIDANII: THE HOUSE OF MEETINGS Chapter 13 - THE GUARDS Chapter 14 - THE PRISONERS URKI: THE CRIMINALS KONTRIKI AND BYTOVYE: THE POLITICALS AND THE ORDINARY PRISONERS Chapter 15 - WOMEN AND CHILDREN Chapter 16 - THE DYING Chapter 17 - STRATEGIES OF SURVIVAL TUFTA: PRETENDING TO WORK PRIDURKI: COOPERATION AND COLLABORATION SANCHAST: HOSPITALS AND DOCTORS “ORDINARY VIRTUES” Chapter 18 - REBELLION AND ESCAPE PART THREE - THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CAMP– INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, 1940—1986 Chapter 19 - THE WAR BEGINS Chapter 20 - “STRANGERS” Chapter 21 - AMNESTY—AND AFTERWARD Chapter 22 - THE ZENITH OF THE CAMP–INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX Chapter 23 - THE DEATH OF STALIN Chapter 24 - THE ZEKS’ REVOLUTION Chapter 25 - THAW—AND RELEASE Chapter 26 - THE ERA OF THE DISSIDENTS Chapter 27 - THE 1980s: SMASHING STATUES Appendix - HOW MANY? NOTES Epilogue - MEMORY BIBLIOGRAPHY TEXT AND ILLUSTRATION PERMISSIONS GLOSSARY About the Author Also by Anne Applebaum Copyright Page This Book Is Dedicated to Those Who Described What Happened In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad One day somebody in the crowd identified me Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there): “Can you describe this?” And I said: “I can.” Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face —Anna Akhmatova, “Instead of a Preface: Requiem 1935–1940” Acclaim for Anne Applebaum’s GULAG Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize “Should become the standard history of one of the greatest evils of the twentieth century.” —The Economist “Thorough, engrossing A searing attack on the corruption and the viciousness that seemed to rule the system and a testimonial to the resilience of the Russian people Her research is impeccable.” —San Francisco Chronicle “An affecting book that enables us at last to see the Gulag whole A valuable and necessary book.” —The Wall Street Journal “Ambitious and well-documented Invaluable Applebaum methodically, and unflinchingly, provides a sense of what it was like to enter and inhabit the netherworld of the Gulag.” —The New Yorker “[Applebaum’s] writing is powerful and incisive, but it achieves this effect through simplicity and restraint rather than stylistic flourish [An] admirable and courageous book.” —The Washington Monthly “Monumental Applebaum uses her own formidable reporting skills to construct a gripping narrative.” —Newsday “Valuable There is nothing like it in Russian or in any other language It deserves to be widely read.” —Financial Times “A book whose importance is impossible to exaggerate Magisterial Applebaum’s book, written with such quiet elegance and moral seriousness, is a major contribution to curing the amnesia that curiously seems to have affected broader public perceptions of one of the two or three major enormities of the twentieth century.” —The Times Literary Supplement “A truly impressive achievement We should all be grateful to [Applebaum].” — The Sunday Times (London) “A chronicle of ghastly human suffering, a history of one of the greatest abuses of power in the story of our species, and a cautionary tale of towering moral significance A magisterial work, written in an unflinching style that moves as much as it shocks, and that glistens with the teeming life and stinking putrefaction of doomed men and rotten ideals.” —The Daily Telegraph (London) “No Western author until Anne Applebaum attempted to produce a history of the Gulag based on the combination of eyewitness accounts and archival records The result is an impressively thorough and detailed study; no aspect of this topic escapes her attention Well written, accessible enlightening for both the general reader and the specialist.” —The New York Sun “For the raw human experience of the camps, read Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich or Irina Ratushinskaya’s Grey is the Color of Hope For the scope, context, and the terrible extent of the criminality, read this history.” —Chicago Tribune ACKNOWLEDGMENTS No book is ever really the work of one person, but this book truly could not have been written without the practical, intellectual, and philosophical contribution of many people, some of whom count among my closest friends, and some of whom I never met Although it is unusual, in acknowledgments, for authors to thank writers who are long dead, I would like to give special recognition to a small but unique group of camp survivors whose memoirs I read over and over again while writing this book Although many survivors wrote profoundly and eloquently of their experiences, it is simply no accident that this book contains a preponderance of quotations from the works of Varlam Shalamov, Isaak Filshtinsky, Gustav Herling, Evgeniya Ginzburg, Lev Razgon, Janusz Bardach, Olga AdamovaSliozberg, Anatoly Zhigulin, Alexander Dolgun, and, of course, Alexander Solzhenitsyn Some of these number among the most famous of Gulag survivors Others not—but they all have one thing in common Out of the many hundreds of memoirs I read, theirs stood out, not only for the strength of their prose but also for their ability to probe beneath the surface of everyday horror and to discover deeper truths about the human condition I am also more than grateful for the help of a number of Muscovites who guided me through archives, introduced me to survivors, and provided their own interpretations of their past at the same time First among them is the archivist and historian Alexander Kokurin—whom I hope will one day be remembered as a pioneer of the new Russian history—as well as Galya Vinogradova and Alla Boryna, both of whom dedicated themselves to this project with unusual fervor At different times, I was aided by conversations with Anna Grishina, Boris Belikin, Nikita Petrov, Susanna Pechora, Alexander Guryanov, Arseny Roginsky, and Natasha Malykhina of Moscow Memorial; Simeon Vilensky of Vozvrashchenie; as well as Oleg Khlevnyuk, Zoya Eroshok, Professor Natalya Lebedeva, Lyuba Vinogradova, and Stanisław Gregorowicz, formerly of the Polish Embassy in Moscow I am also extremely grateful to the many people who granted me long, formal interviews, whose names are listed separately in the Bibliography Outside of Moscow, I owe a great deal to many people who were willing to drop everything and suddenly devote large chunks of time to a foreigner who had arrived, sometimes out of the blue, to ask naïve questions about subjects they had been researching for years Among them were Nikolai Morozov and Mikhail Rogachev in Syktyvkar; Zhenya Khaidarova and Lyuba Petrovna in Vorkuta; Irina Shabulina and Tatyana Fokina in Solovki; Galina Dudina in Arkhangelsk; Vasily Makurov, Anatoly Tsigankov and Yuri Dmitriev in Petrozavodsk; Viktor Shmirov in Perm; Leonid Trus in Novosibirsk; Svetlana Doinisena, director of the local history museum in Iskitim; Veniamin Ioffe and Irina Reznikova of St Petersburg Memorial I am particularly grateful to the librarians of the Arkhangelsk Kraevedcheskaya Biblioteka, several of whom devoted an entire day to me and my efforts to understand the history of their region, simply because they felt it was important to so In Warsaw I was greatly aided by the library and archives run by the Karta Institute, as well as by conversations with Anna Dzienkiewicz and Dorota Pazio In Washington, D.C., David Nordlander and Harry Leich helped me at the Library of Congress I am particularly grateful to Elena Danielson, Thomas Henrikson, Lora Soroka, and especially Robert Conquest of the Hoover Institution The Italian historian Marta Craveri contributed a great deal to my understanding of the camp rebellions Conservations with Vladimir Bukovsky and Alexander Yakovlev also helped my comprehension of the post-Stalinist era I owe a special debt to the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M Olin Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the Märit and Hans Rausing Foundation, and John Blundell at the Institute of Economic Affairs for their financial and moral support I would also like to thank the friends and colleagues who offered their advice, practical and historical, during the writing of this book Among them are Antony Beevor, Colin Thubron, Stefan and Danuta Waydenfeld, Yuri Morakov, Paul Hofheinz, Amity Shlaes, David Nordlander, Simon Heffer, Chris Joyce, Alessandro Missir, Terry Martin, Alexander Gribanov, Piotr Paszkowski, and Orlando Figes, as well as Radek Sikorski, whose ministerial briefcase proved very useful indeed Special thanks are owed to Georges Borchardt, Kristine Puopolo, Gerry Howard, and Stuart Proffitt, who oversaw this book to 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Voennoplennye v SSSR: 1939–1956, Moscow, 2000 aron, Piotr, Ludnos c Polska w Związku Radzieckim w Czasie II Wojny Swiatowej, Warsaw, 1990 Zemskov, V N., “Arkhipelag Gulag: glazami pisatelya i statistika,” Argumenty i Fakty, no 45, 1989 ———, “Gulag (istoriko-sotsiologicheskii aspekt),” Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniya, no 6, 1991, pp 4–6 ———, “Spetsposelentsy (po dokumentam NKVD-MVD-SSSR),” Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniya, no 11, 1990, pp 3–17 ———, “Sudba Kulatskoi ssylki (1934–1954 gg),” Otechestvennaya Istoriya, 1/1994, pp 118–47 ———, “Zaklyuchennie v 1930-e gody: sotsialno-demograficheskie problemy,” Otechestvennaya Istoriya, no 4, July/August 1997 Zubkova, Elena, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions and Disappointments , 1945–1957, trans Hugh Ragsdale, Armonk, NY, 1998 Zvenya (historical anthology), vol I, Moscow, 1991 ARCHIVES AKB—Arkhangelsk Local Lore Library, Arkhangelsk APRF—Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, Moscow GAOPDFRK—State Archive of Social-Political Movements and the Formation of the Republic of Karelia (former Communist Party archives), Petrozavodsk GARF—State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow Hoover—Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford, CA IKM—Iskitim Local Lore Museum Collections, Iskitim Info-Russ—Vladimir Bukovsky’s document collection [http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/-kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/buk html] Karta—The Karta Society, Warsaw Kedrovyi Shor—Archives of the Kedrovyi Shor lagpunkt, Intlag, in the author’s collection Komi Memorial—Archive of the Memorial Society, Syktyvkar LOC—Library of Congress, Washington, D.C Memorial—Archive of the Memorial Society, Moscow ML—Marylebone Library, Amnesty International Documents Collection, London NARK—National Archives of the Republic of Karelia, Petrozavodsk RGASPI—Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, Moscow RGVA—Russian State Military Archive, Moscow St Petersburg Memorial—Archives of the Memorial Society, St Petersburg SKM—Solovetsky Local Lore Museum Collections, Solovetsky Islands TsKhIDK—Center for Preservation of Historic Document Collections, Moscow VKM—Vorkuta Local Lore Museum Collections, Vorkuta INTERVIEWS Anonymous ex-director of camp orphanage (Moscow, July 24, 2001) Anna Andreeva (Moscow, May 28, 1999) Anton Antonov-Ovseenko (Moscow, November 14, 1998) Irena Arginskaya (Moscow, May 24, 1998) Olga Astafyeva (Moscow, November 14, 1998) David Berdzenishvili (Moscow, March 2, 1999) Viktor Bulgakov (Moscow, May 25, 1998) Zhenya Fedorov (Elektrostal, May 29, 1999) Isaak Filshtinsky (Peredelkino, May 30, 1998) Leonid Finkelstein (London, June 28, 1997) Lyudmila Khachatryan (Moscow, May 23, 1998) Marlen Korallov (Moscow, November 13, 1998) Natasha Koroleva (Moscow, July 25, 2001) Paulina Myasnikova (Moscow, May 29, 1998) Pavel Negretov (Vorkuta, July 15, 2001) Susanna Pechora (Moscow, May 24, 1998) Ada Purizhinskaya (Moscow, May 31, 1998) Alla Shister (Moscow, November 14, 1998) Leonid Sitko (Moscow, May 31, 1998) Galina Smirnova (Moscow, May 30, 1998) Leonid Trus (Novosibirsk, February 28, 1999) Galina Usakova (Moscow, May 23, 1998) Olga Vasileeva (Moscow, November 17, 1998) Simeon Vilensky (Moscow, March 6, 1999) Danuta Waydenfeld (London, January 22, 1998) Stefan Waydenfeld (London, January 22, 1998) Maria Wyganowska (London, January 22, 1998) Valentina Yurganova (Iskitim, March 1, 1999) Yuri Zorin (Arkhangelsk, September 13, 1998) GLOSSARY THE POLITICAL POLICE Cheka Chrezvychainaya komissiya (Extraordinary Commission): secret police, during the civil war era GPU Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie (State Political Administration): secret police during the early 1920s, successor to the Cheka MGB/KGB Ministerstvo/Komitet gosudarstvennoe bezopasnosti (Ministry of/Committee on State Security): secret police in charge of internal and external surveillance in the postwar era MVD Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del (Ministry of Internal Affairs): secret police in charge of jails and camps in the postwar era NKVD Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennikh del (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs): secret police during the 1930s and the Second World War, successor to OGPU OGPU Obedinennoe gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie (Unified State Political Administration): secret police during the late 1920s and early 1930s, successor to GPU Okhrana Czarist-era secret police FOREIGN WORDS AND SOVIET INSTITUTIONS balanda: prison soup banya: a Russian steam bath Barbarossa: Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union—Operation Barbarossa—on June 22, 1941 beskonvoinyi: a prisoner who has the right to travel within different camp divisions without an armed guard besprizornye: Soviet street children Most were orphans, products of the civil war and collectivization blatnoi slovo: thieves’ jargon (see urka) Bolsheviks: the radical faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which under Lenin’s leadership became the Russian Communist Party in 1918 bushlat: a long-sleeved prisoners’ or workers’ jacket lined with cotton wadding Central Committee: the chief policy-making body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union In between Party Congresses, it met two or three times a year When it was not in session, decisions were made by the Politburo, which was technically a body elected by the Central Committee chifir: extremely strong tea When ingested, produces something resembling a narcotic high collectivization: policy of forcing all peasants to abandon private farming, and to pool all of their land and other resources into a collective, pursued from 1929 to 1932 Collectivization created the conditions for the rural famine of 1932–34, and permanently weakened Soviet agriculture Council of People’s Commissars (or Sovnarkom): theoretically the ruling government body, the equivalent of a ministerial cabinet In practice, subordinate to the Politburo Comintern: The Third (Communist International), an organization of the world’s communist parties, formed in 1919 under the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party The Soviet Union shut it down in 1943 dezhurnaya or dnevalnyi: in normal parlance, a concierge In a camp, the man or woman who stays behind in the barracks all day, cleaning and guarding against theft dokhodyaga: someone on the verge of death; usually translated as “goner” Dom Svidanii: literally “House of Meetings,” where prisoners were allowed to meet their relatives étap: prisoner transport feldsher: a medical assistant, sometimes trained and sometimes not glasnost: literally “openness.” A policy of open debate and freedom of speech launched by Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s Gulag: from Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei (Main Camp Administration), the secret police division which managed the Soviet concentration camps Izvestiya: the Soviet government newspaper Karelia: the Republic of Karelia, in the northwest corner of the Soviet Union, bordering Finland katorga: Czarist term for forced labor During the Second World War, the Soviet regime also adopted the word to describe strict-regime camps for war criminals kolkhoz: a collective farm Peasants were forced to work on them after the policy of collectivization was put into practice in 1929–31 kolkhoznik: inhabitant of a kolkhoz Kolyma: the Kolyma River valley, in the far northeastern corner of Russia, on the Pacific coast Home to one of the largest camp networks in the USSR Komi: the Republic of Komi, the northeastern section of European Russia, west of the Ural Mountains The Komi people are the indigenous inhabitants of the Komi Republic, and speak an Ugro-Finnic language Komsomol: Communist Party youth organization, for young people ages fourteen to twenty-eight Younger children belonged to the Pioneers kontslager: Russian for concentration camp Kronstadt rebellion: a major uprising against the Bolsheviks, led by the sailors of the Kronstadt naval base, in 1921 kulak: traditionally, a prosperous peasant In the Soviet era kulak came to mean any peasant accused of opposing Soviet authority or the collectivization policy Between 1930 and 1933, over two million kulaks were arrested and deported kum: the camp administrator responsible for managing the informers’ network KVCh: Kulturno-Vospitatelnaya Chast, the Cultural-Educational Department of each camp, responsible for the political education of the prisoners, as well as theatrical and musical productions lagpunkt: the smallest camp division laogai: Chinese concentration camp Leningrad/St Petersburg: the same city Founded in 1703 by Peter the Great, St Petersburg briefly became (the more Russified) Petrograd in 1914, when Russia went to war with Germany, and was then renamed Leningrad after Lenin’s death in 1924 makhorka: rough tobacco smoked by Soviet workers and prisoners maloletki: juvenile prisoners mamka: female prisoner, the mother of a child born in prison Memorial: organization founded in the 1980s to count, describe, and assist the victims of Stalin Now one of the most prominent human rights advocacy groups in Russia, as well as the premier historical research institute Mensheviks: The non-Leninist wing of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Mensheviks tried to become a legal opposition, but their leaders were sent into exile in 1922 Many were later executed or sent to the Gulag monashki: religious women, of various faiths Literally “nuns” nadziratel: prison or camp guard naryadshchik: the camp clerk responsible for assigning prisoners to work tasks NEP: Novaya ékonomicheskaya politika (New Economic Policy)—Soviet economic policy launched in 1921 Briefly brought back petty capitalism (private shops and traders) Lenin viewed it as a “strategic retreat,” and Stalin abolished it altogether norm: the amount of work a prisoner would be required to in a single shift normirovshik: the camp clerk responsible for setting work norms Novyi Mir: Soviet literary magazine, the first to publish Solzhenitsyn NTS: Narodno-trudovoi Soyuz, the “people’s worker’s party,” an underground political grouping which opposed Stalin, with branches in the USSR and abroad obshchaya rabota: literally “general work.” In a camp, usually unskilled physical labor such as cutting trees or digging ditches osoboe soveshchanie: “special commission.” Committees used to sentence prisoners during periods of mass arrest, from the late 1930s osobye lagerya: “special camps.” These were set up for especially dangerous political prisoners in 1948 otkazchik: someone who refuses to work otlichnik: an outstanding worker OUN: Organizatsiya Ukrainskikh Natsionalistov, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists West Ukrainian partisans who fought against the Red Army during and after the Second World War parasha: a slop bucket in a prison cell or barracks pellagra: a disease of starvation People’s Commissar: head of a government ministry perestroika: a (failed) program of restructuring the Soviet economy, launched by Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s Politburo: The Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party In practice, the Politburo was the most important decision-making body in the USSR: the government—the Council of People’s Commissars—had to its bidding Pravda: the newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party pridurok (plural pridurki): a prisoner who is not on “general work,” but has an easier or more specialized job psikhushka: psychiatric hospital for political dissidents refusenik: Soviet Jews who had asked to emigrate to Israel, but had been turned down rezhim: prison regime samizdat: illegal, underground publications An ironic pun on “Gosizdat,” the name of the state publishing house scurvy: a disease of malnutrition, from lack of vitamin C Among other things, results in night blindness and loss of teeth sharashka: special prison where imprisoned scientists and technicians carried out secret assignments Invented by Beria in 1938 SHIZO: from shtrafnoi izolyator, a punishment cell within a camp SLON: Severnye Lagerya a Osobogo Naznacheniya (Northern Camps of Special Significance) The first camps set up by the political police in the 1920s Social Revolutionaries: A Russian revolutionary party, founded in 1902, which later split into two groups, Left and Right Briefly, the Left SRs participated in a coalition government with the Bolsheviks, but later fell out with them Many of their leaders were later executed or sent to the Gulag Sovnarkom (or Council of People’s Commissars): theoretically the ruling government body, the equivalent of a ministerial cabinet In practice, subordinate to the Politburo spetslagerya: concentration camps set up by the Soviet Military Administration in occupied Germany after 1945 sploshnye nary: a long, unseparated wooden plank bed—a sleeping shelf—on which many prisoners slept at once Stakhanovite: a worker or peasant who has overfulfilled the required work norm Named after Aleksei Stakhanov, a miner who cut 102 tons of coal instead of the norm of seven in a single shift in August 1935 starosta: literally “elder.” In prison cells, camp barracks, and train cars, the starosta was responsible for keeping order Stolypin wagon or Stolypinka: nickname for a railway car used for prisoner transport, in fact a modified passenger car Named, unfairly, in honor of Pyotr Stolypin, Prime Minister of Czarist Russia from 1906 until his assassination in 1911 suki: literally “bitches.” Camp slang for criminal prisoners who collaborated with the authorities taiga: northern Russian landscape, characterized by pine forests, wide rivers, open fields Thaw: brief period of reform following Stalin’s death Launched by Nikita Khrushchev’s speech to the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, and effectively halted by his successor, Leonid Brezhnev, in 1964 tovarishch: “comrade.” A term of respect in the USSR troika: three Soviet officials who sentenced prisoners in lieu of courts during periods of mass arrest, starting in 1937 trudosposobnost: work capability tufta: in a camp, a method of cheating on work norms in order to receive a larger food ration tundra: Arctic landscape, where the earth is permanently frozen Only the surface melts briefly in summer, creating a swamp, a few shrubs and grasses, but no trees udarnik: a worker or peasant who has overfulfilled the required work norm After 1935, the term “Stakhanovite” was more common urka: a professional criminal; also known as blatnoi or vor vagonki: double-decker bunks in camp barracks, for four people vakhta: the headquarters of the camp armed guard, stationed at the entrance into the camp compound valenki: felt boots Vlasovites: followers of General Vlasov, who fought with the Nazis against the Red Army during the Second World War VOKhR: from voenizirovannaya okhrana, armed guard The armed guards in a camp vor: a professional criminal; also known as urka or blatnoi Wehrmacht: Hitler’s military forces zek: from z/k, an abbreviation for zaklyuchennyi, or prisoner zemlyanka: a house or barracks built in a hole in the ground; an earth dugout zona: a concentration camp Literally, the area within the barbed wire TEXT AND ILLUSTRATlON PERMISSIONS Text Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the author’s own Every effort has been made to find copyright holders The author and publishers welcome any additions or corrections W.W Norton: from “The Son Does Not Answer for the Father,” by Alexander Tvardovsky, translated by Vera Dunham; from “Children of the Cult,” by Andrei Voznesensky, tranlated by Vera Dunham; from “The Lower Camp,” by Elana Vladimirovca, translated by Vera Dunham; from “Stalin is Not Dead,” by Boris Chichibabin, translated by Vera Dunham; from An End to Silence: Uncensored Opinion in the Soviet Union from Roy Medvedev’s Underground Magazine Political Diary , edited by Stephen F Cohen, translated by George Saunders Copyright © 1982 by W.W Norton and Company, Inc Used by permission of W.W Norton and Company, Inc Leonid Sitko: “I was a soldier, now I’m a convict” and “There were four roads,” from Tiazhest Sveta Copyright © 1996 Used by permission of Leonid Sitko Polska Fundacja Kulturalna: “Willow Trees in Alma-Ata,” from Gułag Polskich Poetów, Copyright © 2001 by Polska Fundacja Kulturalna Used by permission of Polska Fundacja Kulturalna “Good-bye to the Camp,” from Gułag Polskich Poetów, Copyright © 2001 by Polska Fundacja Kulturalna Used by permission of Polska Fundacja Kulturalna Vozvraschenie: “What Does It Mean—Exhaustion?” from Memoria by Nina Gagen-Torn, Copyright © 1994, Vozvraschenie Used by permission of Vozvraschenie and Galina Gagen-Torn “Even our wives didn’t feel sorry for us,” by Yuri Dombrovsky, from Menya Khoteli Ubit, Eti Suki, Copyright © 1997, Vozvraschenie Used by permission of Vozvraschenie and Klara Dombrovskaya “In the Prison-Camp Barracks,” by Anna Barkova, from Dodnes Tiagoteet, Copyright © Sovetskii Pisatel Used by permission of Vozvraschenie Simeon Vilensky: “The Sound of a Distant Bell,” 1948 Used by permission of Simeon Vilensky “Requiem 1935–1940,” from Poems of Akhmatova, by Anna Akhmatova Translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward Copyright © 1967 by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward Used by permission of Darhansoff, Verrill, Feldman Literary Agents Excerpt from Prison Poems, by Yuli Daniel Translated by David Burg and Arthur Boyars Copyright © 1971 by David Burg and Arthur Boyars Used by permission of Marion Boyars Publishers “The Statue’s Sundered Plinth,” by Alexander Tvardovksy Translated by George Reavey From The New Russian Poets: 1953–1968; an Anthology by George Reavey Copyright © 1981 by George Reavey Used by permission of Marion Boyars Publishers Varlam Shalamov: “Toast to the Ayan Uryakh River” and “To a Poet” used by permission of Iraida Sirotinskaya “I am poor, alone and naked,” from Neskolko Moikh Zhizn, copyright © 1996 by Respublika, used by permission of Iraida Sirotinskaya Illustrations Collection of Yuri Brodksy: photographs 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b Memorial Society: photographs 4a, 4b, 4c, 4d, 12a Drawings by Benjamin Mkrtchyan, Ivan Sukhanov, Sergei Reikhenberg, Yula-Imar Sooster, and Aleksei Merekov The David King Collection: photographs 6a, 6b, 11a, opposite title page GARF: photographs 7b, 9b, 11b, 12b, 13a, 13b, 15a, 16a, 16b, cover KARTA Society: photographs 8a, 8b, 8c, 9a, 10a, 10b The Hoover Institution: photographs 14a, 14b Drawings by Thomas Sgovio Anne Applebaum GULAG Anne Applebaum is a columnist and member of the editorial board of The Washington Post A graduate of Yale and a Marshall Scholar, she has worked as the foreign and deputy editor of the Spectator (London), as the Warsaw correspondent for The Economist, and as a columnist for the online magazine Slate, as well as for several British newspapers Her work has also appeared in The New York Review of Books , Foreign Affairs, and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications Applebaum lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Radek Sikorski, and two children Also by Anne Applebaum Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, MAY 2004 Copyright © 2003 by Anne Applebaum Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks Random House, Inc The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows: Applebaum, Anne, 1964– Gulag: a history / Anne Applebaum.— 1st ed p cm Includes bibliographical references Concentration camps—Soviet Union—History Forced labor—Soviet Union—History Prisons—Soviet Union—History Soviet Union—Politics and government I Title HV8964.S65 A67 2003 365’.45’094709041—dc21 2002041344 www.anchorbooks.com www.randomhouse.com eISBN: 978-0-307-42612-3 v3.0 ... they had been researching for years Among them were Nikolai Morozov and Mikhail Rogachev in Syktyvkar; Zhenya Khaidarova and Lyuba Petrovna in Vorkuta; Irina Shabulina and Tatyana Fokina in Solovki;... book contains a preponderance of quotations from the works of Varlam Shalamov, Isaak Filshtinsky, Gustav Herling, Evgeniya Ginzburg, Lev Razgon, Janusz Bardach, Olga AdamovaSliozberg, Anatoly Zhigulin,... Chronicle “An affecting book that enables us at last to see the Gulag whole A valuable and necessary book.” —The Wall Street Journal “Ambitious and well-documented Invaluable Applebaum methodically,