Gulags

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn I HAD NOT YET even heard the word “nasedka” — “stool pigeon” — nor learned that there had to be one such “stool pigeon” in each cell. And I had not yet had time to think things over and conclude that I did not like this fellow, Georgi Kramarenko. But a spiritual relay,…

THE RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES have opened a new museum in Moscow dedicated to the millions who were persecuted in Soviet labour camps in 1930-1950 — in the so-called Gulag system. (ILLUSTRATION: A prisoner scrawled his date of birth and prison sentence on this log from a labour camp.) The opening…