Resistance in the Gulag Archipelago

What was this? There were men rotting in trenches, men being thrown into mass graves, into shallow pits in the perma frost, men being taken into the camps for the first, second and third times, men being jolted from station to station in prison trucks, wearing themselves out with picks, slaving away to be able to buy a patched-up quilt jacket-and here was this neat little man who could remember the size not only of his shirt but of his collar too!… If you remember your collar size, doesn’t it mean your bound to forget something else, something more important? (Kostoglotov).34

Kostoglotov proceeds on in visiting a zoo, and what do you know, the monkeys there are found to be bearing a strong resemblance to many of his former inmates; no doubt many of whom, were still behind bars (like monkeys).

They reminded him of many of his former acquaintances. In fact, he could even recognize individuals who must still be in prison somewhere.35

Alexander Solzhenitsyn continues exploring through the character of Kostoglotov, the fragility of the human (animal) condition and its relation to rational freedom in the world. The analogy created here is, in the writer’s view, an act of unabashed genius.

The most confusing thing about the imprisoned animals was that even supposing Oleg took their side and had the power, he would still not want to break into the cages and liberate them. This was because, deprived of their home surroundings, they had lost the idea of rational freedom. It would only make things harder for them, suddenly to set them free. 36

It would be incomplete if the “evil prince” and “the hunters” who murdered Beetle were not present as the novel climaxes. Their presence is, as subtle here, as the consequences of Stalinism themselves.

He went there. The cage was empty but it had the usual notice reading “Macaque Rhesus.” He had hurriedly scrawled and nailed to the plywood. It said: “The little monkey that used to live here was blinded because of the senseless security of one of the visitors. An evil man threw tobacco into the Macaque Rhesus’ eyes. Oleg was struck dumb. Up to then he had been strolling along, smiling with known condescension, but now he felt like yelling and roaring across the whole zoo, as though the tobacco had been thrown into his own eyes, “Why?” “Thrown just like that! Why! It’s senseless! Why?” What went straight to his heart was the childish simplicity with which it was written. This unknown man, who had already made a safe getaway, was not described as “anti-humanist” or “an agent of American imperialism”; all it said was that he was evil. This was what was so striking: how could this man simply be “evil”? Children, do not grow up to be evil! Children, do not destroy defenseless creatures!37

Kostoglotov does not linger long after the zoo. He now begins the long process of acclimating himself to rational freedom once again. He had survived whereby the others had not.

He hadn’t even died of cancer. And now his exile was cracking like an eggshell. He remembered the komendant advising him to get married. They’d all be giving him advice like that soon. It was good to lie down. Good. The trains shuddered and moved forward. It was that only in his heart, or his soul, somewhere in his chest, in the deepest seat of his emotion, he was seized with anguish. He twisted his body and lay face down on his greatcoat, shut his eyes and thrust his face into the duffel bag, spiky with loaves. The train went on and Kostoglotov’s boots dangled over the corridor like a dead man’s. An evil man threw tobacco in the Macaque Rhesus’s eyes. Just like that. 38

With the question of evil and good fathomed by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, how can Russian men and women rectify the horrendous predicament? What does he offer up to us as a possible remedy?

(Schulubin): We have to show the world a society in which all relationships, fundamental principles and laws flow directly from ethics, and from them alone. Ethical demands must determine all considerations: how to bring up children, what to train them for, to what end the work of grownups should be directed, and how their leisure should be occupied. As for scientific research, it should only be conducted where it doesn’t damage morality, in the first instance where

It doesn’t change the researchers themselves. The same should apply to foreign policy. Whenever the question of frontiers arises, we should think of not of how much richer or stronger this or that course of action will make us or how it will raise our prestige. We should consider one criterion only: how far is it ethical? “Yes, but that’s hardly possible, is it-not for another two hundred years?” Kostoglotov frowned.39