Prisoner: Galina Ivanovna Levinson
"The barracks, of course, had two-level plank beds. Each was for eight people: four at the bottom, for at the top. At night, the barracks were locked and we used buckets… When we arrived, they gave us mattress covers and straw to fill them, pillow covers and straw for the pillows, half-wool blankets, and, I think, even rough sheets. [...] For the first year and a half, we didn’t have the right to correspondence… Then, they let women who gave birth in the camp to write. When their children grew to one year old, women got permission to inquire about kids who were sent to orphanages. Only after we were all allowed to write one letter a month."
Introduction
The atrocities of working and living conditions in the camps went unnoticed as Soviet authorities promoted the Gulag as a progressive educational prison system to the general populace and prisoners. Posters displayed at the camps reinforced labor—at whatever cost—as a heroic and honorable contribution to the state.
Movie Transcription
Over many Gulag camp gates, a slogan declared: “Labor in the USSR is a matter of honor, glory, courage and heroism.”
In the barracks, posters screamed, “Glory to Stalin, the Greatest Genius of Mankind.”
At the work place, banners urged, “More Gold for Our Country, More Gold for Victory!”
These proclamations of the glories of socialism, the heroism of Soviet labor, and the possibilities of reeducation and reintegration into Soviet society sat uneasily in an environment saturated with death and deprivation.
Millions survived their Gulag, but they would have laughed at the notion that they were re-educated. Most would have used words such as “traumatized,” “brutalized,” or “disfigured”—terms not featured on the propaganda posters.