Prisoner: Vladimir Tchernavin
“Many went willingly to such work, for owing to the painful monotony of prison life and the enforced, endless idleness even this work seemed a distraction and rest. Besides, in the kitchen one sometimes succeeded in stealing or begging an onion head. The need of raw food was so great among us, suffering from scurvy as we were that every one of us would gladly have worked a whole day at any kind of labor, if by doing so we could only obtain a bit of onion. But the examining officers allowed this kind of escape from the demoralizing prison boredom only when they considered the case completed. Highly qualified engineers competed for the right to do plumbing jobs, repair locks, electric lighting and telephones. Learned professors claimed the jobs of polishing floors and cleaning stairs. One clergyman, until his execution, was for a long time in charge of the boiler.”
Introduction
Prisoners performed back-breaking physical labor in inhospitable climates and received food rations that barely sustained their nutritional needs. Work defined life in the Gulag, but some prisoners occasionally found ways to avoid the hardest labor which gave them some feeling of control over their difficult situation.
Movie Transcription
Armed guards and attack dogs accompanied many prisoners’ daily march to their Gulag worksite. Icy winds battered their poorly clothed and barely fed bodies. Prisoners will die this day digging in the mines. Prisoners will die this day digging a 140-mile canal with the most primitive tools. Prisoners will die in the forest and in construction. Only the lucky will avoid hard labor in a workshop, a cafeteria or an office.
Gulag labor was inefficient and often lethal. Officials distributed food according to labor output, forcing prisoners to work long, hard hours trying to complete often impossible quotas, so that they might receive a full food ration. But even full rations often failed to provide enough calories to ensure health and survival. Exhaustion and starvation constantly accompanied prisoners. Many returned from work dead—carried on the backs of their fellow prisoners who then had to extend their workday to dig graves for the fallen.