My copy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago is falling apart. I bought it many years ago at a second-hand book store on Elizabeth Street, back when Melbourne buzzed at lunchtime, and office workers like me found an hour’s solitude and reverie gazing with tilted head at the titles stacked to the ceiling and in piles on the floor. The price on the cover is 20 cents. I picked it up to read it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and haven’t been able to put it down. My copy concludes at the end of Part II. I’ve nearly come to the end; perhaps I’ll search out the other parts in due course.
I’ve been struck by so many passages and insights that make my spine shiver as I reflect on the last three years.
Under the pervasive communist system in Russia, for nearly the entirety of the 20th century, all manner of innocent people were arrested, tortured, tried, brutalised in work camps and prisons, and executed.
Central to the arrests was one single article of the 140 articles of the non-general division of the Criminal Code of 1926. Article 58 consisted of 14 sections – together, they covered every conceivable area of human activity. Some examples can illustrate just how broadly they were interpreted. From chapter 2:
In Section 1 (of Article 58) we learn that any action (and, according Article 6 of the Criminal Code, any absence of action) directed toward the weakening of state power was considered to be revolutionary. Broadly interpreted, this turned out to include the refusal of a prisoner in camp to work when in a state of starvation and exhaustion. This was a weakening of state power. And it was punished by execution…
Section 3 involved ‘assisting in any way or by any means a foreign state at war with the USSR’. This section made it possible to condemn any citizen who had been in occupied territory – whether he had nailed on the heel of a German soldier’s shoe or sold him a bunch of radishes. And it could apply to any citizen who had helped the fighting spirit of an enemy soldier by dancing and spending the night with him.
Section 6 was espionage, but also for suspicion of espionage and even contacts leading to suspicion of espionage. In other words, let us say that an acquaintance of an acquaintance of your wife had a dress made by the same seamstress (who was, of course, an NKVD agent) used by the wife of a foreign diplomat.
Section 7 applied to subversion of industry, transport, trade, and the circulation of money. In the 30s, extensive use was made of this section to catch masses of people – under the simplified and widely understood catchword wrecking. In reality, everything enumerated under Section 7 was very obviously and plainly being subverted daily. So didn’t someone have to be guilty of it all?
But there was no section in Article 58 that was interpreted as broadly and with so ardent a revolutionary conscience as Section 10. Its definition was: ‘Propaganda or agitation, containing an appeal for the overthrow, subverting, or weakening of the Soviet power and, equally, the dissemination or preparation or possession of literary materials of similar content.’ The scope of ‘agitation containing an appeal’ was enlarged to include a face-to-face conversation between friends or even between husband and wife, or a private letter. ‘Subverting and weakening’ the government could include any idea which did not coincide with or rise to the level of intensity of the ideas expressed in the newspaper on any particular day. After all, anything which does not strengthen must weaken: Indeed, anything which does not completely fit in, coincide, subverts!
Anyone who has been paying attention in the last three years must hear more than an echo in that last paragraph. These days, to step outside of the ‘ideas expressed in the newspaper on any particular day’ can quickly land you in hot water. We remember Zoe Buhler, who was arrested in September 2020 at home in her pyjamas, for a Facebook post protesting against lockdowns. A few months before, in her hometown of Ballarat, the police knelt down in solidarity with a Black Lives Matter protest. Zoe was obviously not paying attention to the newspapers.
Fast forward to 2023 and we now know that both the US government and its agencies were directly insisting that Twitter take down posts that didn’t suit their talking points for the day. Turns out that the Australian government was doing that too.
When political arrests were made in Soviet Russia, the dumbfounded innocents typically responded with ‘Me? What for? It’s a mistake! They’ll set things right!’ Unaware, or disbelieving, that their actions or activities as they underwent their daily lives, doing what they thought were entirely normal things, could possibly be interpreted as ‘an appeal for the overthrow of Soviet power’, the citizens could only say, like Zoe, ‘What for?’ After long periods of interrogation and torture, and perhaps a trial, a sentence was handed down, and the nightmare continued in prison camps or work camps, often for 25 years, if you lived that long. ‘What for?’
The zeal of the Soviet prosecutors to root out the subversives reminds me of the zeal of today’s warriors, be it for ‘climate change’, gender identity, mask and vaccine mandates, or voices of constitutional amendment. It’s easy to transgress some or other doctrinal limit and be assailed by condemnation, in person as well as online. ‘What for?’ we ask.
In section 12 of the code, perhaps we find a clue as to what is really going on today.
Section 12 concerned itself closely with the conscience of our citizens: it dealt with the failure to make a denunciation of any action of the types listed. And the penalty for the mortal sin of failure to make a denunciation carried no maximum limit! This section was in itself such a fantastic extension of everything else that no further extension was required. He knew and he did not tell! became the equivalent of, ‘He did it himself!’
Are those entities who pressure sports fans to follow the mob when it comes to the Voice sniffing the wind and getting ahead of the curve, making it perfectly clear they must not fail to denounce anyone who might have the temerity to vote ‘No’ to the Voice referendum? In order to prove they are not failing to denounce, they have to get out in front of the cameras and recite in unison some sort of homage.
Does it also explain the Bud Light fiasco? Or the North Face affair? Do the marketing departments of those companies know something we don’t? Are they trying in advance to prove they are not failing to denounce those who protest against certain ideological movements?
It seems as though we have adopted a similar sort of code, even though (to my knowledge) such a code does not exist in the criminal law of the country. Somehow, people seem to know the ins and outs of this non-existent code, and proceed as if it has already been brought into existence. Social media blocks and throttles subversives according to the code. Protests are allowed or prohibited according to the code. Citizens self-censor according to the code. The greengrocer puts a “Workers of the world, unite!” sign in his window. Solzhenitsyn describes how this can be (chapter 8):
In 1918, quantities of [trials] were taking place, in many different tribunals. They were taking place before there were either laws or codes, when the judges had to be guided solely by the requirements of the revolutionary workers’ and peasants’ power. At the same time, they were regarded as blazing their own trail of bold legality.
In such circumstances, as the law evolves to make criminals of those who just moments before were law-abiding citizens, even the most assiduous newspaper-reading zealots can find themselves caught on the wrong side, as happened to thousands if not millions of Soviet citizens – one day they are denouncing others, the next someone is denouncing them. The same thing happened to us too, (but without the torture and prison camps) – one day it was fine to have a friend over for dinner, the next day it was illegal. One day it was fine to go fishing, the next day it could land you in jail.
So those who encourage this sort of behaviour should take note – once you start playing the game, you have to keep up. The rules can change very quickly, and a ‘Woke-ers of the world, unite!’ sign might not be enough save you from the gulag.
First published on Richard’s substack.