The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 Quotes

“We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history, but merely that hackneyed dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Just as a star suddenly flares to a hundred times its previous brightness -- and then fades away, so, too, a human being not disposed to be a political may nonetheless flare up briefly and intensely in prison and perish as a result. Ordinarily we do not learn about these cases. Sometimes there is a witness to tell about them. Sometimes there is merely a faded piece of paper in front of us on which we can only build hypothesis;”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“... "the historical necessity of development" -- you can spout that nonsense about anything and you'll always be right.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“So immutably does a human being surrender to the mist of the Motherland! Just as a tooth will not stop aching until the nerve is killed, so is it with us; we shall probably not stop responding to the call of the the Motherland until we swallow arsenic.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Архипелаг ГУЛАГ: 1918-1956: опыт художественного исследования

“We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history, but merely that hackneyed dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Mine was, probably, the easiest imaginable kind of arrest. It did not tear me from the embrace of kith and kin, nor wrench me from a deeply cherished home life. One pallid European February it took me from our narrow salient on the Baltic Sea, where, depending on one's point of view, either we had surrounded the Germans or they had surrounded us, and it deprived me only of my familiar artillery battery and the scenes of the last three months of war.

The brigade commander called me to his headquarters and asked me for my pistol; I turned it over without suspecting any evil intent, when suddenly, from a tense, immobile suite of staff officers in the corner, two counterintelligence officers stepped forward hurriedly, crossed the room in a few quick bounds, their four hands grabbed simultaneously at the star on my cap, my shoulder boards, my officer's belt, my map case, and they shouted theatrically: "You are under arrest!"

Burning and prickling from head to toe, all I could explain was, "Me? What for?"

Across the sheer gap separating me from those left behind, across that quarantine line not event a sound dared penetrate, came the unthinkable magic words of the brigade commander: "Sholzhenitsyn. Come back here."

"You have ..." he asked weightily, "a friend on the First Ukrainian Front?"

I knew instantly I had been arrested because of my correspondence with a school friend and understood what direction to expect danger.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Own nothing! Possess nothing! Buddha and Christ taught us this, and the Stoics and the Cynics. Greedy though we are, why can't we seem to grasp that simple teaching? Can't we understand that with property we destroy our soul?
Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. Use your memory! Use your memory!”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“.. и уши развешивали слушать от старых лагерников "как надо в лагере жить."
А как надо жить (и как умереть) мы обязаны знать и без всякого лагеря.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Zakhar Georgiyevich Travkin could have stopped right there! But no! Continuing his attempt to expunge his part in this and to stand erect before his own conscience, he rose from behind his desk--he had never stood up in my presence in my former life--and reached across the quarantine line that separated us and gave me his hand, although he would never have reached out his hand to me had I remained a free man. And pressing my hand, while his whole suite stood there in mute horror, showing that warmth that may appear in an habitually severe face, he said fearlessly and precisely:
'I wish you happiness, Captain!”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Иногда мы хотим солгать, а Язык нам не даёт. Этих людей объявляли изменниками, но в языке примечательно ошиблись — и судьи, и прокуроры, и следователи. И сами осуждённые, и весь народ, и газеты повторили и закрепили эту ошибку, невольно выдавая правду; их хотели объявить изменниками РодинЕ, но никто не говорил и не писал даже в судебных материалах иначе, как "изменники Родины".

Ты сказал! Это были не изменники ей, а её изменники. Не они, несчастные, изменили Родине, но расчётливая Родина изменила им [...]”
― Александр Солженицын, Архипелаг ГУЛАГ

“Oh, "what an intelligent, farsighted humane administration from top to bottom," as Supreme Court Judge Leibowitz of New York State wrote in Life magazine, after having visited Gulag. "In serving out his term of punishment the prisoner retains a feeling of dignity." That is what he comprehended and saw.

Oh, fortunate New York State, to have such a perspicacious jackass for a judge!

And oh, you well-fed, devil-may-care, nearsighted, irresponsible foreigners with your notebooks and your ball-point pens - beginning with those correspondents who back in Kem asked the zeks questions in the presence of the camp chiefs - how much you have harmed us in your vain passion to shine with understanding in areas where you did not grasp a lousy thing!”
― Alexander Solschenizyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“It has been known for centuries that Hunger . . . rules the world! (And all your Progressiv Doctrine is, incindentally, built on Hunger, on the thesis that hungry people will inevitable revolt against the well-fed.) Hunger rules every human being, unless he has himself consciously decided to die. Hunger, which forces an honest person to reach out and steal ("When the belly rumbles, conscience flees"). Hunger, which compels the most unselfish person to look with envy into someone else's bowl, and to try painfully to estimate what weight of ration his neighbor is receiving. Hunger, which darkens the brain and refuses to allow it to be distracted by anything else at all, or to think about anything else at all, or to speak about anything else at all except food, food, and food. Hunger, from which it is impossible to escape even in dreams -- dreams are about food, and insomnia is over food.”
― Alexander Solschenizyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.”
― Alexander Solschenizyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“​Those prisoners who had been in Buchenwald and survived were, in fact, imprisoned for that very reason in our own camps: How could you have survived an annihilation camp? Something doesn't smell right!​”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“The falsehood of all the revolutions of history: they destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them (and also fail, out of haste, to discriminate the carriers of good as well). And they take to themselves as their heritage the actual evil itself, magnified still more.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“To taste the sea, all one needs is one gulp.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“At the Samarka Camp in 1946 a group of intellectuals had reached the very brink of death: They were worn down by hunger, cold, and work beyond their powers. And they were even deprived of sleep. They had nowhere to lie down. Dugout barracks had not yet been built. Did they go and steal? Or squeal? Or whimper about their ruined lives? No! Foreseeing the approach of death in days rather than weeks, here is how they spent their last sleepless leisure, sitting up against the wall: Timofeyev-Ressovsky gathered them into a “seminar,” and they hastened to share with one another what one of them knew and the others did not—they delivered their last lectures to each other. Father Savely—spoke of “unshameful death,” a priest academician—about patristics, one of the Uniate fathers—about something in the area of dogmatics and canonical writings, an electrical engineer—on the principles of the energetics of the future, and a Leningrad economist—on how the effort to create principles of Soviet economics had failed for lack of new ideas. Timofeyev-Ressovsky himself talked about the principles of microphysics. From one session to the next, participants were missing—they were already in the morgue.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“Anna Akhmatova”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“Ideology – that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“...as if it were possible to liberate anyone who has not first become liberated in his own soul.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“The line dividing good and evil cuts through every human heart.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago RUSSIAN LANGUAGE set of 3 books paperback Alexander Solzhenitsyn Архипелаг ГУЛАГ русский язык комплект из 3 книг мягкий переплёт А. Солженицин Arkhipelag GULAG russkiy yazyk

“the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Ideology – that is what gives evil doing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors… Thanks to ideology, the 20th century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Truth, it seems, is always bashful, easily reduced to silence by the too blatant encroachment of falsehood.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Where did this wolf-tribe appear from among our people? Does it really stem from our own roots? Our own blood? It is our own. And just so we don't go around flaunting too proudly the white mantle of the just, let everyone ask himself: "If my life had turned out differently, might I myself not have become just such an executioner?" It is a dreadful question if one really answers it honestly.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“Lägret hade lärt mig en utväg, att inte säga emot men ändå tigande handla emot.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Allt som jag verkligen tänker, så som jag framlagt det i detta arbete, är det både farligt att säga och totalt hopplöst.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956