Eventually, the door was unlocked, and he was ordered to go to another room. Here he was strip-searched. Having removed all his clothes, Solzhenitsyn stood passively while a man in gray overalls explored every orifice of his body. He thrust his fingers in the prisoner’s mouth, his ears, pulled down his lower eyelids, and jerked Solzhenitsyn’s head back to look into his nostrils. The humiliated prisoner was then ordered to take hold of his penis, turn the foreskin back and lift it to the left and right. Finally, he was told to spread his legs as far apart as they would go, bend over, take his buttocks in each hand and pull them apart so that the last remaining orifice could be inspected.
The strip search completed, Solzhenitsyn was told to sit naked on a stool, teeth chattering from the cold, while the man in the gray overalls commenced a thorough search of his clothes. Beginning with underpants, vest, and socks, he pinched all the seams and folds before throwing them at the prisoner’s feet and telling him to put them on. Taking out a jack-knife, the man thrust it between the soles of Solzhenitsyn’s boots and pierced the heels with a marlinspike. Next came Solzhenitsyn’s beloved captain’s tunic. The former officer watched in horror as the man meticulously tore off all the gold braid and piping, cut off the buttons and button-loops, and ripped open the lining to feel inside. His trousers and tailored greatcoat received the same scrupulous attention. Buttons were removed, and the knife once again went to work slicing through the lining.
At last, an hour or so after he had arrived, the man in the gray overalls scooped up the ripped-off braid and piping and departed without a word. Solzhenitsyn, left alone with only the tattered trappings of his former life, was beginning to realize that he was no longer an officer in the Soviet army. Instead, though he did not know it at the time, he had joined another desolate and ragged army numbering millions throughout the victorious Soviet Union. He was among the ranks of Stalin’s slaves.
No sooner had the new recruit to this other army recovered from the first ordeal than another began. A warder, this time in off-white overalls, ordered him once again to remove all his clothes and sit naked on the stool. He felt an iron grip on his neck as the warder shaved first his head, then his armpits, and finally his pubic hair. Shortly after this warder had departed, another arrived. Now the purpose was a medical examination, for which the prisoner was obliged to strip once more. The “examination” consisted principally of a series of questions about venereal disease, syphilis, leprosy, and other contagions.
The “processing” of the prisoner continued with the instruction to undress again, this time in order to take a shower, before he was escorted to another room where his photograph and fingerprints were taken.
By the time these formalities had been completed, it was late at night. Solzhenitsyn was again confined in the tiny windowless cell in which he had originally been placed and to which he had intermittently been returned between one or other of the various humiliating episodes. He was utterly exhausted and, in spite of the cramped conditions, sought to get to sleep by curling up on the floor. The shutter of the peep-hole slid back, the solitary eye peered in, the door was opened, and a warder ordered the prisoner to stay awake. Sleeping was against regulations. Again, oblivious to regulations, Solzhenitsyn sought to sleep by leaning his head on the table. Again, obeying regulations, the warder opened the door and demanded that the prisoner stay awake. Sleep was impossible.
Eventually, he was told to put on his clothes and was once more taken from the cell. He was led along corridors, into a yard, down some steps, and into another wing of the prison. Ascending to the fourth floor in a lift, he was placed in another cell, almost identical to the previous one. This, he assumed, was his new “home”. Soon he was again on the move, this time to a slightly bigger cell, about ten feet by five, which had a wooden bench fastened to the wall as well as the customary stool and table. Compared with his previous home, this new cell was a luxury. He almost, unwillingly and unconsciously, felt grateful. After all, the bench was long enough to stretch out on full-length, long enough to sleep on. Already Solzhenitsyn was adapting himself to the survivalist psychology of the long-term prisoner. The unconscious gratitude was accentuated a few moments later when the door opened, and, instead of being called out for a further bout of humiliation, he was handed a mattress, a sheet, a pillow, pillowslip, and blanket. He was being allowed to sleep! Almost as soon as his eyes were closed, the door burst open, and a warder stormed in. He was supposed to sleep with his arms outside the blanket. Regulations. This was easier said than done. His arms grew cold as the night wore on, and he was unable to pull the blankets up to cover his shoulders. In this unnatural position and with a powerful 200-watt bulb glaring overhead, he had a restless night, sleeping only fitfully.
Having been “processed”, Solzhenitsyn was now ready for interrogation. He was led to the office of Captain 1.1. Ezepov, where a thirteen-foot-high, full-length portrait of Stalin gazed down menacingly from the wall, piercing the accused with his larger-than-life eyes. He was informed that he was being charged under Article 58, paragraph 10, of the criminal code for committing anti-Soviet propaganda, and under Article 58, paragraph 11, for founding a hostile organization. Solzhenitsyn soon learned that his interrogator possessed copies of all correspondence between Solzhenitsyn, Nikolai, Natalya, Kirill, and Lydia from April 1944 to February 1945. He also possessed a copy of “Resolution No. 1”, which Solzhenitsyn had kept in his map-case. The letters contained numerous thinly veiled attacks on Stalin, while the Resolution stated unequivocally the intention of Nikolai and Solzhenitsyn to organize a new party. This was more than enough evidence for the experienced interrogator to build a case that Solzhenitsyn was part of a sinister conspiracy to overthrow the Soviet regime.
After four days of interrogation, Captain Ezepov was sufficiently confident about securing a conviction that he gave permission for Solzhenitsyn to be transferred from solitary confinement to a normal investigation cell. Here he would be sharing with three other prisoners, three other human beings in the same pathetic predicament as himself. He would have someone to talk to, someone with whom he could share experiences. After the days of nightmarish seclusion and uncertainty, he would now have human contact, mutual support, companionship. He again felt the involuntary gratitude that had swept over him when he first arrived in the “luxury” cell four days earlier. In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn wrote that he was so happy when the cell door opened and he saw “those three unshaven, crumpled, pale faces… so human, so dear” that he stood hugging his mattress and smiling with happiness. “Out of all the cells you’ve been in,” Solzhenitsyn recalled, “your first cell is a very special one, the place where you first encountered others like yourself, doomed to the same fate. All your life you will remember it with an emotion that you otherwise experience only in remembering your first love.”2
There was another parallel with first love. In his contact with these three prisoners, he was about to be introduced to new horizons, new insights into life, new perspectives that had been invisible to him in his previous blinkered existence. His eyes were opening to a whole new world.