MVI_3124
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(what was you were saying?) I was saying that in the 30s
Those who lived before the 30s
they so to say were not corrupted.
They were different,
much better.
Of course Gulag was a very bad experience.
Varlam Shalamov wrote about it.
He said that even one
day can mess you up.
That's why he said that
he never wished it to happen to anybody and it's a bad
experience for anybody. I think he was right
because, for
expample, during
Perestryka there were many publications in
a magazine called "Ogoniok".
And I read a very interesting article about one woman
before she was arrested,
she was a political prisoner herself, so,
she was arrested in the 30s and before that
she used to be a historian who studied Ancient Greece.
She could read
Homer and others
in the original and travelled quite a lot.
She spoke many
languages and that woman all over sudden
was sent to Gulag and she spent there
many years and when she was released,
she was a different person.
Of course her life was completely
ruined and the only thing she was proud
about was that she could
swear for 20 minutes without a break.
She was proud about it.
She used to say that she perfectly mastered
prison talk. So that's why
there in every camp
the criminals ran the show.
They usually have their own rules.
That's why it's not a place for
someone who is intelligent and well educated.
And such people usually didn't survive.
They persih there. Like Mandelshtamm
for example, he just broke down in
Gulag, or anoher example,
Shalamov, who survival can be considered as
a miracle. He was a nurse.
Somebody helped him. In general
in such conditions for anybody
who was intelligent and well educated
was very difficult to live through.
Those who survived were mainly common people.
They were able to endure.
Countrymen or workpeople
were able to adapt themselves.
But intelligent people would not survive.
First of all the work itself was
strenuous, then the conditions
of cold, then
the sanitary conditions were very poor.
Camp fever was there and people
died because of that.
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Well and the
criminals were the ones to run the show
and they would kill many and they would
gamble away themselves and etc.
There were internal squabbles between different groups of criminals.
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They would kill each other and etc.
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Of course it was like that in Khandyga. Khandyga
was a camp poit so to say... It was
a transit camp for 700 people.
And there always...
They always needed more people for
the Magadan highway and they all went through Khandyga.
They would come to Khasyga and from there they would be
distributed to different parts of the road. And that's why
some were sent to mining camps and some would be sent to
the road camps and they built it there.
The conditions were extremely difficult.
Climate at that time...
the temperature was -46
-56 C.
Now with the climate change the winters
are not that severe.
And those times the winters were very cold
from -46C to
-54C at an average all winter
every day. And they had to work in winter too
not only in summer and in summer
there were mosquitoes and other difficulties.
And the food
and their clothes were very poor.
Once someone
by the name of Kuzin Anatoly Ivanovich who
lived in Khandyga that when he came
to Magadan through all staging posts,
he said that he almost had no clothes.
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