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Part 3, Chapter 20: The Dogs’ Service
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Gulag Archipelago, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Oppression and Totalitarianism
Survival and the Human Spirit
The Dangers of Ideology
Power as a Corrupting Force
The Value of Religion and Spirituality
Summary
Analysis
Solzhenitsyn explains that “campside,” the zone surrounding each “island” of the Archipelago, led to corruption to the surrounding areas, spreading the brutal culture of the camps into the broader Soviet Union. This area, filled with camp guards, officers, former prisoners, opportunistic workers, and riffraff seeking easy money, bred camp ideology. The harsh language, ruthless attitudes, and distorted moral values seeped into everyday life, contaminating even big cities like Moscow when camps operated nearby. People flocked to these zones for financial benefits, drawn by higher wages and the chance to exploit prisoner labor, yet many grew so entrenched in the camp atmosphere that they refused to leave it behind. This created a society where cruelty and corruption infiltrated every level, tainting the entire nation.
The influence of the “campside” zones illustrates how the moral degradation of the Gulag system extended far beyond the prison walls, contaminating Soviet society as a whole. By detailing how the camps’ harsh values and behaviors infiltrated surrounding communities and even major cities, Solzhenitsyn emphasizes the Gulag’s role in reshaping Soviet life. The lure of financial gain and access to cheap labor made ordinary citizens complicit, eroding traditional moral standards. Through this, Solzhenitsyn argues that the camps did not exist in isolation but were part of a broader system that degraded the nation’s collective character.
Themes
