Chapter 4: The Bluecaps

Progress so far. Yeah it’s a tough book. But there’s so much I want to highlight and think about in every chapter.

The Bluecaps. In this chapter we meet the interrogators. 

Solzhenitsyn begins by saying that despite spending hours with the interrogators, he remembers little about them personally: much less than about his cell mates, for example. “There is one thing, however, which remains with us all as an accurate, generalized recollection: foul rot—a space totally infected with putrefaction.  And even when decades later, we are long last fits of anger or outrage, in our own quieted hearts we retain this firm impression of low, malicious, impious, and possibly muddled people.” (144)

“Their branch of service does not require them to be educated people of broad culture and broad views—and they are not. Their branch of service does not require them to think logically: and they do not. Their branch of service requires only that they carry out orders exactly and be impervious to suffering—and that is what they do and what they are. We who have passed through their hands feel suffocated when we think of that legion, which is stripped bare of universal human ideals.” (145)

Again, the picture presented is of a system which brings out the very worst in people. You  are at the mercy of people in whom you cannot assume the most basic human values.

At last, on page 160, the question that has occupied the mind of this reader so far:

“Where did this wolf tribe come from among our people? Died it really stem from our own roots? Our own blood? 

It is our own. 

It is a dreadful question if one answers it honestly.”

What in the human nature or culture, or both, enables a human being to behave like the interrogators did? After the atrocities are documented, this question must be the main motivation for anyone reading Gulag Archipelago. How could humans do such things? Could I torture and murder? How about the people around me? How would I know if they (or I) harbour such desires and tendencies?

Solzhenitsyn recalls himself and his friends being recruited for the NKVD in university. He notes there was no logical reason for them to refuse to join: there were no better jobs promised, and the propagandistic education they received from their professors assured them that fighting the internal enemy was worthwhile work. But....”It was not our minds that resisted but something inside our breasts. People can shout at you from all sides: ‘You must! You must!’ But inside your breast there is a sense of revulsion, repudiation. I don’t want to. It makes me sick. Do what you want without me; I want no part of it.” (161)

This echoes a passage in Sebastien Haffner’s book Defying Hitler where Haffner observes that the Germans who rejected the Nazis did so instinctively. They found them revolting; they knew they did not belong with them. Perhaps a strong emotional response is what keeps us safe from the worst of humanity?

Somehow this is not very reassuring, however. Some people might have the instinctive response, but many clearly don’t. Or maybe they have a strong positive emotion instead. For my part, though I listen to my emotions, I want to go beyond them toward a more conscious understanding. But it is worth remembering that some situations might already be too complex and horrible to achieve that nuanced understanding . If ones instincts say “run the other way...Now!” there is probably a reason.

In any case, Solzhenitsyn backtracks from any implication that his younger self was superior morally or perceptively. He did not join the NKVD but did join the army. As a soldier he suffered under unjust officers. However when he became an officer he forgot what this felt like and treated others with just as much selfishness and disrespect. Even worse he forgot many of his actions for years, not thinking them important enough to recall until he sat down to write. His childhood lessons about kindness toward others and the Soviet teachings about equality were both irrelevant as soon as he got the stars on his shoulder boards that marked him as a superior, entitled being. He made others serve him and took for granted that he deserved unquestioning obedience and everything superior to others.

“I credited myself with unselfish dedication. But meanwhile I had been thoroughly prepared to be an executioner....

“So let the reader who expects this book to be a political expose slam its covers shut right now.  If only it were that simple. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it was necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? 

....

“Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren’t.” (168)

Page 172; trying to determine how you figure out if there is any virtue left in people 

 

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it is a well considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in human nature to seek a justification for his actions. 173