Book: The Kolyma tales

Rough and cruel chief, the false teacher, unscrupulous doctor, but all this is nothing compared to the corrupting power of the criminal world. Those are all the same people, and there, he will see in them human. Thieves - not the people.

Power is corruption. Unchained beast hidden in the human soul, seeking the satisfaction of his greedy eternal human essence in the beatings, the murders. I don't know if it is possible to obtain satisfaction from the signature on death sentences. Perhaps, there are also a grim pleasure in the imagination, not looking for excuses.

- So I can not live. "Better to die standing than live on my knees", - said solemnly Shestakov. - Who said that?
In fact. A familiar phrase. But couldn't remember who and when said these words. All the book was forgotten. The book did not believe.

In the hall, and now stood, one after another, and, though he had not recorded and could not write his poems, all words easily used to get up at some predetermined and each time an extraordinary pace. Rhyme was a seeker tool magnetic search words and concepts. Every word was a part of the world, it has responded to rhyme, and the whole world is swept with the speed of any electronic machines. Everyone was shouting: take me. No, me. To look for anything not necessary. Only had to discard. Here were two people - one who composes, who started his chopper in full, and another that selects from time to time stops a running machine. And, seeing that he is two people, the poet realized that now writes real poems. And that is that they are not recorded? To write, print, all is vanity. Everything that is born not disinterested, is not the best. The best part is that it's not recorded that was written and disappeared, vanished without a trace, and only the creative joy he feels and that with nothing to confuse, proves that the poem was created that beautiful was created. Not wrong is he? Unmistakable if his creative joy?
He remembered how bad as poetically helpless was the last verses of the Block and as the Block don't seem to understand...

The camp experience is entirely negative, one minute. Man it only gets worse.

- I, Galina Pavlovna, since, as I became an adult, I live on a very important commandment: "do Not teach his neighbor." In the manner of the gospel. Every destiny is unique. Just prescription fake.
- I thought the writers...
The misfortune of Russian literature, Galina Pavlovna, that she climbs into other people's Affairs, directs the destinies of others, speaks on issues in which she understands nothing, having no right to meddle in a moral issue to condemn, not knowing and not wanting to know anything.

All human feelings - love, friendship, jealousy, kindness, compassion, thirst for fame, honesty - had left us with the meat that we lost during his prolonged starvation. In minor muscular layer that remained on our bones, which still gave us the opportunity to eat, move, and breathe, and even cut logs, and pour a shovel of stone and sand in cars and even driving cars on the endless wooden ladder to the gold mine, along the narrow wooden road on rinsing device, this muscular layer is only anger - the most enduring human emotion.

Obviously, the orderly seemed shameful to wash the floors yourself at least five minutes in the day when he can hire a laborer. This property, inherent to the Russian people, Andreev observed at the mine. Will give head for the cleaning of the barrack orderly a handful of tobacco: half of tobacco orderly put in your pouch, and half will hire the orderly from the barracks of the fifty-eighth article. That, in turn, perepolovinit shag and hire the workers from their barracks for two cigarettes cigarette. And that's a hard worker, having worked twelve to fourteen hours per shift, washing floors on the night for these two cigarettes. And thinks for the happiness - after all, the tobacco it'll change the bread.

With the first illusion was over quickly. This is real work, the work, which at the gates of all camp departments is prescribed by the Charter of the camp inscription: "Labor is a matter of honor, matter of fame, matter of valor and heroism." The camp could instill instilled only hatred and aversion to work.

It often seems, so Yes, probably it is actually that people because and rose from the animal Kingdom, became man, that is, a creature that could think of things like our Islands with all the improbability of their life, that he was physically tougher than any animal. Not the hand humanized monkey fetus brain, not the soul - there are dogs and bears coming smarter and more moral person. And subjugate the forces of fire - it was after the execution of the main conditions of transformation. Under other equal conditions at the time the man was much stronger and tougher physically, only physically. He was tenacious like a cat - this saying is wrong. A cat would be more correct to say - this thing is tenacious, man.

We also realized an amazing thing: in the eyes of the state and its representatives a person is physically strong is better, it is better, more moral, more valuable than a weak person that can't get out of the trench and twenty cubic meters of soil per shift. First and moral second. It performs a "percentage", that is, performs its main duty to the state and society, and therefore all respects. They too are consulted and considered, are invited to meetings and meetings in their area, far from the issues of throwing heavy slippery ground from the wet slimy ditches.

And the person lives. Maybe he lives by hope? If he is not a fool, he can't live on hopes. Why so many suicides.

Russia is a country of checks, the country of control. The dream of every good citizen and a prisoner, and a civilian, he put something, someone to check. First: I'm over someone commander. Second: I am honored by the trust. Third: for this, I'm less responsible than for direct labor.

Past and present is essential to success that the writer was something of a foreigner in the country about which he writes. He wrote from the point of view of the people, their interests, Outlook, - among whom he grew up and acquired habits, tastes, views. The writer writes in the language of those on whose behalf he speaks. And no more. If the writer knows the material too well, those for whom he writes, do not understand the writer. Writer changed, moved to the side of your material.