There was one other important respect in which Krasnaya Presnya differed from the Butyrki Prison Solzhenitsyn had just left. At Butyrki, all the inmates were political prisoners, but now, for the first time, Solzhenitsyn found himself amongst hardened criminals, devoid of all civilized standards of behavior. He was about to undergo a brutal baptism.
Armed only with the valued food parcel that Natalya had sent him, he was placed in his first cell at Krasnaya Presnya. Apart from the overcrowding, the heat, and the stench, the first thing he noticed upon arrival was that there were no spare bunks. The upper tier of bunks was occupied by the criminals. Their leaders, the top dogs, had the bunks by the window. The lower tier was occupied by “a neutral grey mass”, mostly former prisoners of war. There was, however, plenty of space under the bunks. Having no option, Solzhenitsyn slid along the asphalt floor on his belly, inching himself under one of the bunks. A few moments later, in the semi-darkness, he heard “a wordless rustling” and noticed juveniles, some as young as twelve, creeping up on all fours “like big rats”. They jumped on him from all sides and, in total silence, “with only the sound of sinister sniffing”, he felt several pairs of hands searching for his precious bundle of bacon, sugar, and bread. He was totally powerless to resist, trapped beneath the bunk and unable to get up or move. Then, as swiftly and silently as they had arrived, they were gone. Solzhenitsyn was left feeling stupid and humiliated. Creeping out awkwardly, rear end first, he got up from under the bunk. Rising, he noticed the cell’s godfather seated on his throne, an upper-tier bunk beside the window. In front of him were the contents of Solzhenitsyn’s food parcel, displayed as trophies. The godfather’s face “sagged crookedly and loosely, with a low forehead, a savage scar, and modern steel crowns on the front teeth. His little eyes were exactly large enough to see all familiar objects and yet not take delight in the beauties of the world.” He looked at Solzhenitsyn “as a boar looks at a deer, knowing he could always knock me off my feet”.4
It was then that Solzhenitsyn acted in a way which would torment his conscience for many years afterward. In a display of mean-spirited selfishness similar to that of the episode with the suitcase soon after his arrest, he complained indignantly that since the godfather had taken his food he might at least be granted a place on one of the bunks. The godfather agreed and ordered a former prisoner of war to vacate his bunk by the window. The POW obeyed submissively and crawled under one of the other bunks. It was not until nightfall that Solzhenitsyn heard the reproachful whispers of his neighbors. How could he kowtow to the thieves by driving one of his own people under the bunks in his place? The whispers struck a raw nerve. Yes, they were his own people, imprisoned under 58-lb, the POWs. They were his own brothers-in-loss, and he had betrayed them. “And only then did awareness of my own meanness prick my conscience and make me blush. (And for many years thereafter I blushed every time I remembered it.)”5
The feelings of guilt rushing through Solzhenitsyn’s body as he felt the reproachful glare of his own people engendered a spell of intense introspection. What sort of person was he? A traitor? A Judas? A coward? Surely, not a coward. Hadn’t he pushed his way into the heat of a bombing in the open steppe? Hadn’t he driven bravely through a minefield? Hadn’t he remained cool-headed when he had led his battery out of encirclement in East Prussia, and hadn’t he even gone back into the midst of the danger zone to salvage a damaged command car? No, surely he was not a coward. Why, then, had he submitted so cravenly to the theft of his food? Why had he not smashed his fist into the godfather’s ugly face? Perhaps, after all, he was a coward. Certainly, it seemed harder to be brave in the sickening heat of this prison cell than it had been in the gory heat of battle. And, in any case, even if he was no coward, he was a traitor, a Judas betraying his friends not with a kiss but with a craven plea to a craven crook. And all because of a few rashers of bacon.
The introspection sent ideas whirling round and round in the prisoner’s conscience until it fastened on the thought of food parcels. Were they not more trouble than they were worth? Did they not consume much more than they were consumed? Had they not already consumed the soul of the godfather? Were they not too cruel a temptation?
Foolish relatives! They dash about in freedom, borrow money… and send you foodstuffs and things—the widow’s last mite, but also a poisoned gift, because it transforms you from a free though hungry person into one who is anxious and cowardly, and it deprives you of that newly dawning enlightenment, that toughening resolve, which are all you need for your descent into the abyss. Oh, wise Gospel saying about the camel and the eye of a needle! These material things will keep you from entering the heavenly kingdom of the liberated spirit.6
Slowly the introspection began to heal his troubled mind. He had come to accept the loss of the food parcel and, in the very act of doing so, had profited from the loss. Profit from loss—a purgatorial paradox, pointing to paradise. He had learned a valuable lesson at Krasnaya Presnya: “And thus it is that we have to keep getting banged on flank and snout again and again so as to become, in time at least, human beings, yes, human beings.”7
Having learned the lesson, Solzhenitsyn did not have to tolerate the cramped and criminal environment of Krasnaya Presnya for very long. On August 14, 1945, he and sixty other political prisoners were transferred to Novy Ierusalim—“New Jerusalem”—a somewhat inapt name for a corrective labor camp situated thirty miles west of Moscow in the buildings of a former monastery of the same name. They were transported in two open lorries but were ordered to squat on the floor so as not to be visible to inquisitive onlookers on Moscow’s streets. The streets themselves were bedecked with flags. It was VJ Day, the day of final victory over Japan. The Second World War, which Solzhenitsyn had greeted with such jingoistic delight when the Soviet Motherland had entered the fray four years earlier, had finally come to an end. With the irony of these reflections in his mind, one wonders what Solzhenitsyn thought when he arrived at New Jerusalem for the first time to be greeted with cries that “the Fascists have arrived!” Many of the prisoners arriving for the first time with him had suffered terribly as prisoners of war in Nazi death camps, and such cries of derision added insult to injury. None of this mattered amidst the unsubtle stereotypes that governed thought in the Soviet Union. All political prisoners were “fascists” and were considered worse than their “criminal” counterparts.
It was at New Jerusalem that Solzhenitsyn got his first bitter taste of forced labor. He was put to work in the digging brigades in the clay-pits, and for the first time felt the crushing force of his physical limitations. “The work-loads of an unskilled labourer are beyond my strength”, he wrote to Natalya. “I curse my physical underdevelopment.”8 In fact, he had told Natalya only half the story, less than half the story.
At long last, there had been an amnesty, but it applied only to those who, in Solzhenitsyn’s words, were “habitual criminals and nonpolitical offenders”.9 Not only were the political prisoners, the “fascists”, excluded from the amnesty, they were expected to work even harder because of it. All over the camp, giant slogans appeared: “For this broad amnesty let us thank our dear Party and government by doubling productivity”. The production target for each worker in the clay-pits was raised to six wagons of clay per shift, far beyond the capabilities of anyone unaccustomed to physical labor, and Solzhenitsyn worked himself into the ground struggling to fill half that number. The squelch and squalor of those dismal days in the clay-pits at New Jerusalem were described graphically in The Gulag Archipelago: