The Gulag Archipelago: Part 3, Chapter 7: The Way of Life and Customs of the Natives Summary & Analysis

Life in the Gulag camps presented a relentless struggle, marked by endless, grueling labor in an environment stripped of compassion. Zeks faced impossible work norms that demanded labor from dawn until well into the night, often enduring temperatures that dropped to minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Logging, the backbone of many camps, inflicted especially brutal conditions. Zeks had to stamp down chest-deep snow to reach the tree trunks, chop them down, and cut the branches, all while fighting the cold and exhaustion. They hauled massive loads of wood on their backs to freight cars, sinking into the snow and collapsing under the weight. If they failed to meet their quotas, the guards forced them to keep working under the glare of searchlights until midnight, giving them barely enough time to eat a meager meal before beginning another punishing day. During the war years, prisoners referred to this labor as “dry execution.”

The work itself varied but never ceased to be grueling. Prisoners dug up and hauled ore from frigid mines, smelted metals in suffocating heat, and built roadbeds and tunnels with primitive tools. Agricultural camps demanded that prisoners wade through bogs to cut hay or dig peat while standing waist-deep in freezing mud. Every task took a toll, and those who faltered faced brutal punishment. Clothing and footwear fell apart quickly, forcing prisoners to improvise with rags and scraps tied with bits of wire. Many trudged through the snow in makeshift shoes made from old tires or went barefoot, suffering from frostbite.

Hunger consumed every aspect of life in the camps. Meals consisted of thin, watery gruel made from spoiled vegetables, beet tops, or trash. Guards routinely stole the meager rations, leaving prisoners with barely enough to survive. Hunger dominated their thoughts, leading to further theft. Desperation sparked violent scrambles for scraps from the slop buckets, with last-leggers—those on the brink of death—fighting over garbage. The psychological toll ran deep; zeks lost all sense of self, forgot their own names, and became mere shells of human beings. Their profound suffering left no room for reflection or higher thought—only the basic, animalistic drive to survive another day.

Death lurked everywhere. Starvation weakened zeks until scurvy, pellagra, or dystrophy claimed them. Their bodies, emaciated and covered in sores, crumbled as their spirits broke. Corpses littered the work sites, sometimes frozen in haunting positions: hunched over a wheelbarrow, collapsed with heads between knees, or clinging to each other. Drivers threw the bodies onto sledges and hauled them to mass graves, where gravediggers dumped them unceremoniously, often without coffins or clothes. Guards hastened the deaths of those too weak to walk, shooting them or leaving them to die in the woods. In the morgue, guards confirmed death by running bayonets through bodies.