The Gulag Archipelago

Prisoners were transported across the Archipelago, the system of prison labor camps known as the Gulag. Trains, trucks, and ships were part of a “thoroughly developed system” (149) that transports people across the country via an efficient network of stations and prisons. Some of these vehicles used the same transport networks as civilian vehicles but do so in disguise. Prisoners were crammed into the so-called Stolypin railway carriages, traveling for days at a time while being fed the bare minimum of food. Providing food and toilet facilities to the prisoners was a complicated process, which bred even more resentment among the guards. Solzhenitsyn conveys the abject situation by giving hypothetical advice to the condemned: They must give up any idea of personal property and “only own what you can carry with you” (158), such as knowledge and memories.

Most prisoners, as they were moved around the Gulag via transit prisons, struggled to differentiate the prisons from one another. Solzhenitsyn describes the miserable conditions he and others experienced in these transit points. Some, he recalls, did not even have the privilege of a filthy latrine bucket as “Siberian industry hadn’t caught up with the full scope of arrests” (161).