Forty-Five Things I Learned in the Gulag

[CQB27]

For fifteen years the writer Varlam Shalamov was imprisoned in the Gulag for participating in “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities.” He endured six of those years enslaved in the gold mines of Kolyma, one of the coldest and most hostile places on earth.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/12/forty-five-things-i-learned-in-the-gulag/

 

[mo mauser]

A good read. Thanks for sharing.

 

[CQB27]

A good read. Thanks for sharing.

These Really Stood out to me:

1. The extreme fragility of human culture, civilization. A man becomes a beast in three weeks, given heavy labor, cold, hunger, and beatings.

2. The main means for depraving the soul is the cold. Presumably in Central Asian camps people held out longer, for it was warmer there.

4. I realized that the feeling a man preserves longest is anger. There is only enough flesh on a hungry man for anger: everything else leaves him indifferent.

6. I realized that humans were human because they were physically stronger and clung to life more than any other animal: no horse can survive work in the Far North.

7. I saw that the only group of people able to preserve a minimum of humanity in conditions of starvation and abuse were the religious believers, the sectarians (almost all of them), and most priests.

22. I saw that women are more decent and self-sacrificing than men: in Kolyma there were no cases of a husband following his wife. But wives would come, many of them (Faina Rabinovich, Krivoshei’s wife).

30. I discovered that the world should be divided not into good and bad people but into cowards and non-cowards. Ninety-five percent of cowards are capable of the vilest things, lethal things, at the mildest threat.

35. I learned to “plan” my life one day ahead, no more.

36. I realized that the thieves were not human

40. Knowing people is useless, for I am unable to change my attitude toward any scoundrel.

41. The people whom everyone—guards, fellow prisoners—hates are the last in the ranks, those who lag behind, those who are sick, weak, those who can’t run when the temperature is below zero.

42. I understood what power is and what a man with a rifle is.

 

[Comanche]

Wow!

 

[emale]

Know what I figured out by age 13? I want to learn from the mistakes of others, not my own. I saw what was happening in the US, at age 16, when the GCA 68 was passed and started prepping for what's coming. I became a black belt, a world class combat pistol and rifle match competitor, and AR and 1911 smith by age 27, and went on to class III stuff by age 32. Start with learning the proper use of your mind. Read the non-fiction works of Ayn Rand, Harvey Binswanger, Ludwig Von Mizes, Henry Hazlitt, the Tannenbaums, the Brandens, so that you'll know how to sort out the gem ideas from the bs.

 

[jimipanic]

#39
Women have played no major role in my life. The reason is the camp

Camp +1

 

[emale]

I have a fine woman in my life, she's less than half my age, and she has a 9 yr old daughter, who is still with her family in Asia. She'll be coming here this year. I'm retired, and my assured income is enough to cover half of the expenses of the household, half the cost of the kid, leaving me with savings every month and the things I wish to do. My wife's income covers half of the cost of the kid, her own expenses, half of the cost of our expenses what she sends the rest of the family over there (ie, $700 a month, her fun and some savings. If it were not for my retirement income, they'd still be living in what amounts to a ghetto, hand to mouth. Because she works so hard and because I make easy money, 11 people over there have a much more pleasant, worry-free life, and a woman and child have a great life here.I had horrible luck with 3 really bad US woman and one that was "so-so", several years with each. I got lucky with my Asian wife.