. . . of Art and Experience
You probably have never heard of my time as a guard in the "Gulag." ("Gulag" is the nickname crafted from the acronym The Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies — Главное Управление Исправительно —Трудовых Лагерей и колоний, Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitel'no-Trudovykh Lagerey i koloniy — in the former Soviet Union.)
My job was to stand on a high platform, attached to a twenty foot concrete wall, over looking the yard or a penal "labor camp"—three hours per shift. Many of our prisoners were actual criminals as would be found in prisons in America and other Western countries. Many of our prisoners were "political prisoners." Virtually all of these came to the camps without a trial. They might no even have had the charade of a hearing before the Secret police. Their crimes range from petty theft, to talking back to their boss at work, telling political jokes, to outright criticism of the government, to full-fledged sedition.
At its height, the Soviet government had 476 camp complexes, each complex being composed of hundreds of mini-camps. Estimates are that as many as 7 million prisoners were in these camps at one time. The death rate was about 10% per year. Records on death and "disappearance" were slim and poorly kept.
Three of these vast "complexes" were north of the arctic circle. Even among Gulag employees it was seen as punishment to work at these camps.
One of our foremost prisoners was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian. Mr. Solzhenitsyn died, last Sunday, 3 August 2008, at the age of 89. He spent twenty years in the camps (from 1974 to 1994) after having been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970—the year I came to work at the camp.
The camp where I was a guard was located on Vineland Place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This was the world premiere of a play about life in the Gulag. It was based Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Love Girl and the Innocent. Because of the historic nature of this event—the first staging of any play by Solzhenitsyn, the Guthrie Theatre (where the production was staged) simply titled it, Solzhenitsyn Play. It was a long dark look at "life" in a Soviet camp.
To add to the realism, the theatre was kept cool (not as cold as legendary Minnesota Winters.) As such the audience was warned and encouraged to bring coats and NOT hang them on the open racks in the lobby, but wear them in the theatre.
To be a small part—non speaking role wit little or no movement (audience members were overhead arguing as to whether I was a mannequin or a real person) was a great honor. His story was so inspiring to the entire company of actors and designers. I am inspired that he continued to make great art—important and well written—while living in the worst conditions imaginable. It's a warm sunny day here in the Bay area and the beautiful, ten foot high windows all 'round my loft give brilliant light to the most ordinary tasks of my day. How can I not create. (Especially with chocolate and red wine near by.)
Solzhenitsyn wrote his novel, The Gulag Archipelago, which was smuggled out of the U.S.S.R. and published in the West in 1973. This was an epic work that told of the inhumane conditions in the gulag and the repressive nature of the tyrannical state the fashioned a world of intimidation, suspicion, ignorance for all but the elite power brokers at the top.
A few favorite thoughts from Mr. S:
“The one and only substitute for experience which we have not ourselves had is art, literature”
“It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.”
“For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.”
“It is the artist who realizes that there is a
supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice
under God's heaven.”
God bless Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
[ Today's post is a part of Randy Elrod's Watercooler Wednesday on his Ethos blog.]
