"May justice be a thick-piled carpet beneath your feet"

(Published 10.6.2009)

http://www.dailynationalcourier.com/national_courier/jun2009_daily/10-06-09/artical/artical1.htm

In 1935, at the tender age of 32 he was arrested for writing derogatory comments in letters to a friend about the conduct of the war by Joseph Stalin, whom he called "the whiskered one". He was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda under Soviet criminal code, and also for founding a "hostile organization".He was taken to the the dreded Lubyanka prison in Moscow, where he was beaten and interrogated. On July 7, 1945, he was sentenced in his absence to an eight-year term in a labor camp, "˜a normal sentence for most crimes under Article 58 at the time.
After serving in different work camps as a miner, bricklayer and foundry foreman he penned his experiences that formed the basis of book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, one of his two best literary works including The Gulag Archipelago that won him Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.
In March 1953 after the expiry of sentence, he was sent in internal exile for life at Kok-Terek in southern Kazakhstan, as was common for political prisoners. He repented for serving as a captain in Red Army.
After Khrushchev's Secret Speech in 1956 he was freed from exile and exonerated. After his return to European Russia while teaching at a secondary school he start writing his epic tome The Gulag Archipelago strictly at night so as to ensure making it to the print stage. In 1960, he approached the chief editor of the Noviy Mir magazine, with the manuscript of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was published in edited form in 1962, with the explicit approval of Nikita Khrushchev, who while defending it at the presidium of the Politburo hearing said, "There's a Stalinist in each of you; there's even a Stalinist in me. We must root out this evil". The book became an instant hit and sold-out everywhere. During Khruschev's tenure, It was studied in schools in the Soviet Union and three more novellas of him were published in 1963.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich exposed the cruelty of Soviet prison system to the West. It caused ripples not in the closed Russian society then but also sensation in the in the West because of its start realism and candour not to mention the fact that it was the first major piece of Soviet literature since the twenties on a politically charged theme, He blamed Lenin for introducing mass executions, creating planned economy, founding the Cheka, the predecessor of dreaded KGB, and laying down the foundation of the system of infamous labor camps, that later came to known as Gulag.
He was not that lucky in his attempt to legally publish his another novel, The Cancer Ward, in the Soviet Union. This had to get the approval of the Union of Writers which allowed its publication only if revised and cleaned of anti-Soviet insinuations. Not only the publication of the book stopped but he also became a persona non-grata in his own country. By 1965, the dreaded KGB had confiscated the manuscript of the book. All this, however, did not discourage him to keep secretly working on the most subversive of all his writings, the monumental The Gulag Archipelago. After completion, his handwritten script was kept hidden from the praying eyes of KGB in the care of a friend in Estonia until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In 1970, a year after he was expelled from the Union of Writers, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He did not show up to receive the Nobel prize at Stockholm because of being afraid that he would not be let back into the Soviet Union. He received his prize at the 1974 ceremony finally after being deported from the Soviet Union ultimately.
I take pride to read The Gulag Archipelago, a three-volume work on the Soviet prison camp system, in entirety. It was based on his personal experience along with testimonials of 227 former prisoners and Solzhenitsyn's with his in-depth research of the penal system. It discussed the system's origins from the founding of the Communist regime, with Lenin himself having responsibility, detailing interrogation procedures, prisoner transports, prison camp culture, prisoner uprisings and revolts, and the practice of internal exile. The appearance of the book in the West put the word gulag into the Western political vocabulary and guaranteed swift retribution from the Soviet authorities.
In a country where the luxury of a few is guaranteed at the expense of a abject misery of many Gulag Archipelago reads like a book that talks about us exclusively. I produce below excerpts from it so you could better understand what I mean:
"Our obtuse, our blinkered, our hulking brute of a judicial system can live only if it is infallible. The brute is so strong and so sure of itself only because it never reconsiders its decisions, because every officer of the court can lay about him as he pleases in the certainty that no one will ever correct him. To this end there exists a tacit understanding that every complaint, whatever summit of summits you send it to, will be referred back to the very authority of which you are complaining. Let no officer of the court (prosecutor or investigator) be censured for abusing his office, for giving free reign to bad temper or a desire for personal vengeance, for making a mistake or for misconducting a case. We will cover up for him! Form a wall around him! We are the Law"”- and that is what Law is for.
"What is the good of beginning an investigation and then not bringing charges? Does this not mean that the interrogator's work is wasted? What is the good of hearing without a conviction? . . . Think of the discomfort you would be causing your comrades in the profession"”- what's the point of it? Once begun, as the result of a denunciation , let's say, an investigation must end without fail in a conviction, which cannot possibly be quashed. Above all"”- don't let one another down. And don't let the raikom down"”- do what they tell you. In return they will see that you come to no harm.
"Endure and flourish, O noble company of judges! We exist for you! Not you for us! May justice be a thick-piled carpet beneath your feet. If it goes well with you, then all is well!
"The proven reliability of the judicial system makes the lives of the police much easier. It enables them to apply without misgivings the method known as the "trailer" or the "crime sack." Because of the slackness, the inefficiency, the boneheadedness of the local police, crime after crime after crime remains unsolved. But to keep the books straight, criminals must be "exposed" (and cases "closed"). So they wait for a suitable opportunity. A man lands in the police station"”- somebody pliant, easily bullied, not too bright"”- and they saddle him with all these unsolved crimes . . . The health of the society has improved , since no sin goes unpunished. And the police in charge of criminal investigations are given prizes."
He is Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (December 11, 1918 - August 3, 2008), a Russian novelist, dramatist and historian. His was the man who made the world aware of one of the most inhumane practices of Russian justice, judicial and prison system and the oppressive totalitarian regime of what we now call former USSR. In his Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn rejected the view that it was Stalin who created the Soviet totalitarian state.
His 30-volume edition of collected works will soon be published in Russia. On June 5, 2007 then Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree conferring on Solzhenitsyn the State Prize of the Russian Federation for his humanitarian work. Putin personally visited the writer at his home on June 12, 2007 to present him with the award.
August 3 this year will mark the first death anniversary of that giant of a man who we know as Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn.