Resistance in the Gulag Archipelago

Third and finally, in a state of hopeful culmination, the hypothesis will bear fruit. That being, if there exist no governmental implementation and public support of a criminal justice system acting in the interests of all the people (i.e., the rule of law) then dissent shall be suffocated. Without the existence of established and accessible channels representing the interests and grievances of the population at large, through which all injured parties may seek recourse without threat of governmental terroristic tactics, innocent persons shall suffer undue harm.

Included in the above stated processes of “a criminal justice system,” one would submit the sometimes forgotten tenet of a person’s innocence prior to being proven guilty under law. Equal application of the laws would also be conducive to a system “acting in the interests of all the people.” In fact, the writ of habeas corpus, statutes of limitations, and the prohibitions regarding double jeopardy and the implementation of ex-post facto legislation are all applicable to the concept of “a criminal justice system” as outlined above. If a system, be it through the dictates of its orientation or the madness of the presiding dictator, places a greater emphasis on the objectives of the state thus proceeding to negate the preserving of humanitarian means — then dissent which could serve to ameliorate social conflict will not be made manifest. In accordance with the thought as espoused by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, one cannot separate means from ends any longer.

The Russians claimed they wanted to set up a paradise on earth — their subconscious chose hell. They have murdered their scientists, their poets, the soul of their people. The criminal is spreading in every country. In totalitarian countries it is those in power who are criminal.

Eugene Ionesco (1974)

An excerpt from “No,”

Esquire, December 1974:254.

A quarter of a century ago, with the great hopes of mankind, the United Nations was born. Alas, in the immoral world it, too, became immoral. It is not a United Nations but a United Governments, in which those freely elected and those imposed by force and those which seized power by arms are all on a par. Through the mercenary bias of the majority, the UN jealously worries about the freedom of some peoples and pays no attention to the freedom of others. By an officious vote it rejected the review of PRIVATE COMPLAINTS — the groans, shouts and pleadings of individual, common PLAIN PEOPLE — insects too small for such a great organization. The UN never tried to make BINDING on governments, a CONDITION of their membership, the Declaration of Human Rights, the outstanding document of its twenty-five years and- thus the UN betrayed the common people to the will of governments they had not chosen.

-Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1972)

Nobel Lecture: 25-26.

Translated from the Russian by F.D. Reeve

The Gulag Archipelago (1973) is in scope and density worthy of its subject, which is nothing less than the most massive and systematic repression of a people by its leaders that the world has ever known. The Bolsheviks inherited prison camps from the Romanov monarchy they overthrew, but what had been a purely punitive institution under the tsars became an economic one as well under the commissars. Slave labor attained its apotheosis under Joseph Stalin and his last police chief, Lavrenti Beria. One must preclude discussing particular instances of resistance by first recognizing the relationship between industrial construction and the proliferation of forced labor camps.