Gulag

I have long since stopped turning the pages of the file and they have lain next to me for more than an hour or two, growing cold with their own thoughts. My guardian [the KGB archivist] is already beginning to cough suggestively and look at his watch. It’s time to go. I have nothing more to do here. I hand over the files and they are negligently dropped again into the shopping bag. I go downstairs, along the empty corridors, past the sentries who do not even ask to see my papers, and step out into Lubyanka Square.

It’s only 5 p.m., but it is already almost dark and a fine, quiet rain falls uninterruptedly. The building remains beside me and I stand on the pavement outside, wondering what to do next. How terrible that I do not believe in God and cannot go into some quiet little church, stand in the warmth of the candles, gaze into the eyes of Christ on the Cross and say and do those things that make life easier to bear for the believer . . .

I take off my fur hat, and drops of rain or tears trickle down my face. I am eighty-two and here I stand, living through it all again . . . I hear the voices of Oksana and her mother . . . I can remember and recall them, each one. And if I remained alive, then it is my duty to do so . . .²¹

NOTES

Full details of published and unpublished memoirs, works of literature, reference, archives, and interviews cited in the Notes in abbreviated form can be found in the relevant section of the Bibliography. All references to memoirs are to the English translated version, except for where the Russian title of a work is given.

Introduction

1. Quoted in Cohen, p. 39.

2. Leggett, pp. 102–20.

3. Okhotin and Roginsky.

4. See Appendix for a fuller discussion of these statistics.

5. Rigoulot, Les Paupières Lourdes, pp. 1–10.

6. Quoted in Johnson, p. 243.

7. Quoted in Revel, p. 77.

8. Amis; John Lloyd, “Show Trial: The Left in the Dock,” New Statesman, September 2, 2002, vol. 15, issue 722, pp. 12–15; “Hit and Miss,” Guardian, September 3, 20.

9. Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia; Robert Conquest, “Small Terror, Few Dead,” The Times Literary Supplement, May 31, 1996.

10. This happened to the author in 1994. The phrase “too anti-Soviet” is a direct quote from a letter. A different publication, The Times Literary Supplement, eventually ran a much shortened version of the review.

11. “Neither Here nor There” (review of Between East and West, New York, 1994), The New York Times Book Review, December 18, 1994.

12. For a full discussion of this issue see Malia.

13. Webb, p. 31.

14. Quoted in Conquest, The Great Terror, p. 465.

15. See Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov; and Klehr, Haynes, and Anderson, for the archival history of the American Communist Party.

16. Quoted in N. Tolstoy, Stalin’s Secret War, p. 289.

17. See Thomas, pp. 489–95; and Scammell, Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, for details. The attempt to portray Solzhenitsyn as an alcoholic (Scammell, pp. 664–65) was particularly clumsy, since he was known for his dislike of alcohol.

18. Pipes, pp. 824–25.

19. Overy, pp. 112 and 226–27; Moskoff.

20. L. Ginzburg, p. 36.

21. Kozhina, p. 5.

22. , p. 15.

23. Kennan, pp. 74–83.

24. Chekhov, p. 371.

25. , pp. 16–27.

26. Popov, pp. 31–38.

27. Kennan, p. 242.

28. , p. 65–85.

29. Anisimov, p. 177.

30. GARF, 9414/1/76.

31. , pp. 44–64.

32. Ibid., p. 161.

33. Chekhov, p. 52.

34. , pp. 161–74.

35. Sutherland, pp. 271–302.

36. Adams, pp. 4–11.

37. Volkogonov, Stalin, p. 9.

38. This photograph appears, among other places, in Figes.

39. This photograph appears in Volkogonov, Trotsky.

40. Bullock, pp. 28–45.

41. Volkogonov, Stalin, p. 9.

42. Kotek and Rigoulot, pp. 97–107; Okhotin and Roginsky, pp. 11–12.

43. I elaborated upon this definition in a “A History of Horror.”

44. Geller, p. 43.

45. Quoted in Kotek and Rigoulot, p. 92.

46. This account of the prehistory of concentration camps comes from Kotek and Rigoulot, pp. 1–94.

47. , pp. 270–85.

48. L. Tolstoy, pp. 408–12.

49. See Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire, for a full discussion of Stalin’s attitude toward “enemy” ethnic groups.

50. Arendt, pp. 122–23.

51. Bullock, p. 24.

52. Weiner, “Nature, Nurture and Memory in a Socialist Utopia.”

53. Bullock, p. 488.

54. Sereny, p. 101.

55. I am grateful to Terry Martin for helping me to clarify this point.

56. Shreider, p. 5.

57. Lynne Viola makes this point about kulak exiles.

58. See Applebaum, “A History of Horror,” for more details.

Part One: The Origins of the Gulag, 1917–1939

1: Bolshevik Beginnings

1. From Stekla vechnosti, pp. 172–73.

2. Likhachev, Vospominania, p. 118.

3. Pipes, pp. 336–37.

4. See, for example, Service, Lenin.

5. Pipes, pp. 439–505; Figes, pp. 474–551.

6. Geller, pp. 23 and 24.

7. Jakobson, pp. 18–26.