Dwell on the past and you'll lose an eye; forget the past and you'll lose both eyes

Yesterday, I read the book A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It takes place in a forced labor prison camp in Siberia during the early 1950s. The author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, spent several years in the Gulag system himself, and much of the novel comes from his personal experiences.

The way the camp was engineered and designed is frightening. It seems very likely that the prisoners could have revolted and taken over the guards and jailers--some prisoners would be killed in an attempt like this but, because of sheer numbers, it would be possible.

The way the camp is designed, though, successfully creates an atmosphere in which very few of the prisoners even consider something like this. As the book says "it is every man for himself." Through Shukhov's character (and others), it becomes evident that the primary concerns of the prisoners are obtaining just a little extra food, a cigarette, and maybe five minutes with your own thoughts. In other words, simple survival becomes the mantra. The surroundings are accepted and almost all focus is on individual survival. Everything is structured to ensure this mentality. In fact, Shukhov mentions that he is not even sure if he would want to be somewhere else--his mind is so focused on surviving and rejoicing in the occasional extra bowl of gruel or six ounces of bread.

The camp is also designed to make sure that the prisoners work and work hard at the various tasks that are given to the different work gangs (things like building their own prisons and walls and cells, as well as building powerplants and other buildings used by non-prisoners). The inmates are formed into work gangs and all the desirable and necessary components to survival (food rations, less shitty jobs, time in the evening) are predicated by the gang's work output. So, an individual's labor very concretely affects those around the individual--all must work hard in order for the gang to get their rations, etc. If one person starts fucking up the forced labor demands, others suffer. While this does, in a limited way, bring people together socially, it very specifically does not lead to the sort of group togetherness that could lead to uprising and revolt. Instead, it simply guarantees the prisoner's labor, while maintaining the "every man for himself" perspective.

Anyway, I won't say much more about the book--in case anyone reading this hasn't and wants to read the book. It is interesting to think about this book in the context of different analyzes of fascism (which I mentioned in the last post). People argue whether or not the Stalin-era Soviet Union was fascist or not; I guess, from what little I know, the differences seem only to be surface concerns--the Soviet government under Stalin definitely embraced fascist tactics. In fact, if you look at the 10 to 14 different traits or steps of a fascist state, Stalin Russia falls neatly into almost every one.

I think different fascist, totalitarian, and, I'd say, pretty much every state (who was it that said "every state is a tyranny"?) have studied the tactics used by other powers in the past to subjugate people. These powers know what tends to work and what doesn't. They use history as a tool; they learn from what has come before. So should we. "Forget the past and you'll lose both eyes."

And it is frightening to think of how many times historically people have been subjected to this kind of imprisonment and brutality and have not fought back. There is something to be learned here.