Didn't Read It
A guided tour through the stories that have shaped our culture and the world we live in.
Whether you’re a literature nerd, a romance aficionado, or just Not That Into Books, there’s no denying that the “great works” of literature have played a part in influencing everything from public policy to superhero movies. If you’ve ever wanted to know whether that pretentious guy on Twitter is correct in referring to news stories as “Orwellian,” wondered what stories inspired shows like Bridgerton, or just been curious about why, exactly, your high school English teacher was so insistent about assigning books by Dead White Guys, Didn’t Read It is the podcast for you.
Didn't Read It
Who Doesn't Love a Gulag? "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," with Goad Gatsby
We're diving into the cheerful, cheerful world of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his classic novel of the Soviet gulags, "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"--join us and new pal Goad Gatsby as we meditate on the importance of lunch and not licking other people's leftovers.
If you'd like to see more of Goad, you can find him on Bluesky @goad.bsky.social or subscribe to his newsletter at https://goad.ghost.io/
As always, we are:
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-Thankful to Jess Versus (on Instagram @jessversus) for our incredible logo and assorted works of art
-Thankful to Black Iris Social Club for use of their beautiful space
-Thankful to William Albritton for our incredible theme song, "Books 2.0"
-Thankful to Federico Ferrandina for our closing music, "Russian Walz."
Von Denis. Oh, God.
>> Goad Gatsby:I. I don't know why the. Why everybody in the Soviet Union has has these difficult to pronounce Eastern European names. Books, books, books, books, books, books.
>> Grace Todd:Hello, and welcome to Didn't Read it, the podcast that is a product of the decadent intelligentsia. I am your host, Grace Todd, and I'm joined today by a new pal of the pod goat, Gatsby.
>> Goad Gatsby:Hey, it's great to be back here for the first time ever.
>> Grace Todd:How are you doing, bud?
>> Goad Gatsby:I'm doing great.
>> Grace Todd:Glad to hear it.
>> Goad Gatsby:I've discovered a fun, ah, feature of the Trump administration. Now, we all hate it. Let's not kid ourselves. We all hate it.
>> Grace Todd:It's pretty bad. Yeah.
>> Goad Gatsby:But now, like, once every week, we're going to find out, like, somebody that Trump has pardoned got shot dead by police.
>> Grace Todd:That does seem to be becoming a trend, like, really rapidly.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Which is fascinating.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. So, you know, whenever I'm out, I'll be like, he's got a gun and he was pardoned by Trump is what. Is what I will. What I will say. Uh-huh.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. There's, you know, just a bunch of cops show up. You know, they got their eyes on me, and I say, look at him over there.
>> Grace Todd:This is a good tactic. I like it.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:I'm, not formally endorsing it, but I will be deeply amused if you put it into action.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Speaking of wild accusations, actually, sorry, first, would you like to introduce yourself?
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, hey, I'm Goad Gatsby. And, you know, I do things like live in Richmond and cover politics and, I don't know, tweet sometimes. Although tweeting, not so good. They're called Skeets.
>> Grace Todd:Skeets.
>> Goad Gatsby:Blue sky tweets Skeets.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, my God. Twitter is a bad place.
>> Goad Gatsby:Blue Sky. Well, you won't have somebody come in and dispute the Holocaust on you if you post about it.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. Blue Sky. We have a blue sky. The podcast does. If you're listening to this and you're on Bluesky, you can find us on Blue Sky. I think we just didn't read it or didn't read it. Pod. I keep meaning to pivot over to Blue sky as the lesser of the social media evils, but there's a vibe there that I can't quite put my finger on that I'm having a hard time.
>> Goad Gatsby:It just doesn't have the teens yet.
>> Grace Todd:Is it the teens? I don't think it's the teens. Maybe it is the teens. That's Alarming.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. It doesn't have the young people coming in and, doing their hip new dances or telling us about new emojis we could be using.
>> Grace Todd:It's the lack of shitposting. I think, for me, it doesn't feel quite as shitposty or it doesn't feel like it has that energy of the. The old world of shitposts.
>> Goad Gatsby:Have you seen them post Alf Hogg yet?
>> Grace Todd:No.
>> Goad Gatsby:Well, then you have not been on Blue sky if you have not seen Alf Hogg.
>> Grace Todd:All right. I'm clearly behind on the true to form for the person that I am. I am, six developments behind in the world of social media. So I will. I'll catch up. You'll have to send me. What is it?
>> Goad Gatsby:Alf Hogg.
>> Grace Todd:Okay. You'll have to send me.
>> Goad Gatsby:No, I will not be showing you drawings, of Alf. You know, Alf, the 80s. Oh, yeah. There's drawings of Alf with his penis.
>> Grace Todd:I was gonna say. So to clarify, we are discussing Alf's penis.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yes, Alf. Hogg.
>> Grace Todd:Good. Thank you. You were saying it so fast, my brain was interpreting it as one word rather than Alf. Space hog.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:The hog of Alfred.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Well, good.
>> Goad Gatsby:He's never met a cat he didn't like.
>> Grace Todd:And on that wholesome note, goat.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:What do you know about, the Soviet Union and specifically its literature?
>> Goad Gatsby:Well, I know this is a controversial subject, but the Soviet Union. Better than the Romanov dynasty.
>> Grace Todd:Okay.
>> Goad Gatsby:By miles. All right. Did they do some bad stuff? Yes.
>> Grace Todd:Uh-huh. Okay.
>> Goad Gatsby:But they did have people write things down. There was lots, lots more, literacy in the Soviet Union than in the, Romanov dynasty. Russia.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Goad Gatsby:So with that, they were able to write m. More books, not only because they knew how to write books, but people would now be able to read them.
>> Grace Todd:So the subject of today's episode would vehemently disagree with you on just about every point that you made. Which does not mean that you're wrong.
>> Goad Gatsby:I said it was a controversial subject.
>> Grace Todd:What do you know more specifically, or have you ever heard of Alexander Solzhenitsyn?
>> Goad Gatsby:I thought that there was going to be a list there. No, I don't know. I don't know.
>> Grace Todd:Just the one guy. Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
>> Goad Gatsby:No.
>> Grace Todd:Okay. Well, you're going to learn about him today.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right.
>> Grace Todd:All right. So Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the novel of his that we're doing today is called One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. And it was published in 1962 under the sort of Auspices of Khrushchev. All right, so, we're post. When the book is published, we're post Stalin.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:We've got Nikita Khrushchev in power and the novel is published in this brief period of sort of softening of the Soviet hard line on literature that could be considered even remotely controversial or anti communist.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right.
>> Grace Todd:Khrushchev allowed it to be published because there was this sort of brief period following the death of Stalin where the idea was like, okay, Stalin, bad, excessive. Too many murders, too many people in the gulags. This was a problem. But communism still good. The ussr. Rah, rah. Let's keep this project going. So what we're going to do is blame all of the worst excesses of everything that happened up until this point on Stalin specifically.
>> Goad Gatsby:Mm m. That's a smart move. Blame the guy who can't be alive to defend himself anymore.
>> Grace Todd:Blame the dead genocidal dictator. Yes, It's a phenomenal move. I can't wait to do it myself when the dictator of my humble abode.
>> Goad Gatsby:Wait.
>> Grace Todd:Finally perishes.
>> Goad Gatsby:Let's blame everything on Jimmy Carter. This is all his fault. Everything was just going fine until Carter rolled up.
>> Grace Todd:It's going to be the new thanks Obama. Thanks Carter. Yes, exactly. And so we're going to. We're going to talk quite a bit about Solzhenitsyn and his sort of relationship with communism writ large. But before we go into the novel, the most important thing you need to know is that he was one of the October children. Have you ever heard of that? October children or like October's children or the. Sometimes they also called them like the October twins.
>> Goad Gatsby:I kind of. I go with, Scorpios.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, that. And they were the children who were born in, like, within a year or two of the October Revolution. Okay, so they were the children who have no memory of a world before the Soviet Union.
>> Goad Gatsby:So kind of like how I have to tell all the Gen Z kids that, before they didn't even care if you brought Gatorade onto the plane.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, very much so. The children who do not remember just like walking up to a gate at an airport without being fondled by somebody. So yes, he was one of the post 911 babies, but the Russian equivalent. Yes, the October children. And so he never knew a world before the ussr? Not really. He did witness some of the worst excesses of the civil war as a small child, but he. From when he was a teenager onwards, he was an ardent communist, like, very pro Stalin, very pro communism, very Pro Russia. He joined the army during World War II, was stationed on the German front, and wrote some very indiscreet letters to a friend of his.
>> Goad Gatsby:Well, first of all, I want to thank him for his service in doing his part in taking out Hitler.
>> Grace Todd:He did murder Nazis. Yes, yes, unfortunately. So he had a. He had a group of close friends. They were all college educated. He had degrees in mathematics and physics. And he sort of had this core group of. Of other, you know, young, very well educated Russian men. And they were all big thinkers. And so they were writing to each other about sort of trying to get communism as it was, as it existed in Russia, to adhere more closely to, like, Lenin's original vision and gently criticizing. It's funny, because the way the biographies will usually frame this is that he made, like, one remark about Stalin, and that's not necessarily true. And I don't think that what happened to him afterwards should have happened, but it was a little more thorough than just like, badmouthing Stalin one time. That being said, they were definitely writing letters to each other criticizing Stalin. And they had gone with the extremely subtle nicknames Mustache and Baldy for Lenin and Stalin, which was definitely never m Gonna get them caught by the military censors.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right, all right.
>> Grace Todd:Uh-huh. Very like, you know, Orange Cheeto Man.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Kind of nickname. You're like, I, you. What do you think you're accomplishing with this? Anyway, while he was on the front, he gets arrested, he is sent to prison, and then he spends the next eight years of his life living in gulags.
>> Goad Gatsby:Again, we thank him for his service.
>> Grace Todd:Now, are you familiar with what the gulags were in a broad sense?
>> Goad Gatsby:Now, there's two types of idea of what a gulag is. All right? It's either the worst kind of prison you can imagine, or we just take you out to the middle of nowhere where you can't, like, find a way to get back into civilization and just say, yeah, figure it out.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. So there were multiple kinds of gulag. Good job. He was not in the, go figure it out kind of gulag. He was in a forced work camp on the steppes of Kazakhstan.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right, I've heard about them.
>> Grace Todd:It was not great. And he spent 5ish years in this one particular work camp that was specifically for political dissidents. And he did briefly serve in. They had these sort of nicer gulags for scientists and people who could be of use where they were essentially doing, like, forced academic labor. But they at least had, like, food and the chance to relax. Now and again. The conditions were much nicer, and he kept making himself a problem until he got booted into one of the not so nice gulags.
>> Goad Gatsby:Now, I will say that I've heard stories about people getting sent to a gulag and then just, like, walking back to a city. Well, and again, that sounds like it's one of the good gulags in that one. Seems like there is some gulag inequity here in the Soviet Union.
>> Grace Todd:You know, the good gulags, the nice.
>> Goad Gatsby:Ones, I would like to see, like, you know, a judge being like, I'm, sentencing you to five years of prison. Good prison.
>> Grace Todd:Good. Yeah. Fun prison. Sending you to the entertaining prison.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Where the good stuff happens.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. You'll get, all the good channels, actually. Water park in the prison.
>> Grace Todd:Ooh. Maybe the water park is a prison. Maybe it's just one big water park prison.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, yeah. And every tube, you know, you go down the slide, just takes you further and further into the prison.
>> Grace Todd:Oh. Oh, yeah. Now we're getting, like. It's getting very conceptual, Chutes and ladders. But a water park prison? I'd watch that movie. It'd be very trippy, but I'd watch that movie anyway. So all of that is to say, going into the novel itself, the important things to kind of remember are Solzhenitsyn is very much writing from life. And we will talk about how the novel itself kind of came to fruition a little later. And it is important to remember that this book is a byproduct of. Of a man who went into the army, very confident in his sort of view of the world, and left the gulags with different opinions.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, yeah, it definitely sounds like, man, I sure love Communism or, communist leaders. And then be like, oh, no, these guys suck.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, pretty much.
>> Goad Gatsby:We didn't win World War II because of Stalin. We won despite. Of Stalin.
>> Grace Todd:So, all of that being said, let's take a journey into a day in the life of Ivan Denisovich.
All, right at 5:00 that morning. Reveille was sounded as usual, but by the blows of a hammer on a length of rail hanging up near the staff quarters. The intermittent sounds barely penetrated the window panes on which the frost lay two fingers thick, and they ended almost as soon as they'd begun. It was cold outside, and the camp guard was reluctant to go on beating out the reveille for long. So we are on the steps of Kazakhstan. It is deep winter. It's Cold as f. No one is having a good time, and it is before dawn, and everything is still dark when. Ivan.
>> Goad Gatsby:You should just give everybody a nickname.
>> Grace Todd:Well, they all have nicknames. It's Russian literature. So they all have, like, four names, and they use them interchangeably without warning.
>> Goad Gatsby:You know, like, this was written by. By Nikki.
>> Grace Todd:Nick. Yes, exactly. He was. Everyone called him, Sonya, I think, was his, What's the word? The patronymic is the. Is the father's name. But the, You know, it's like a nickname.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, yeah. Anyway, go on, tell me more about this depressing book.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. So it is before dawn, and Ivan Denisovich Shukov has, for the first time, been tempted to oversleep reveille. And this is unusual for him because.
>> Goad Gatsby:Is it a crime to oversleep here in the Soviet Union?
>> Grace Todd:Yes, it is.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, man. You know what? I'm changing a lot of my views on the Soviet Union.
>> Grace Todd:In the prison camps, it is a crime to oversleep. But also, the 90 minutes between reveille and assembling for work are the only 90 minutes, it says, that belonged to him, not to the authorities. And any old timer could always earn a bit by sewing a pair of mittens for someone out of old sleeve lining or bringing some rich loafer in the squad his dry boots right up to the bunk so that he wouldn't have to stumble barefoot around the heap of boots looking for his own pair. And so already what we are establishing is these people have incredibly narrow windows of time to call their own. And these are really important to them. Right. Like, it's one of those little things that makes you feel like a person still. And also, again, very importantly, because as we're going to learn, there's, like, a thriving economy happening in this gulag. This is when you can do little things that help you make your life a little bit better. Right?
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. I believe in America, we call it yard time.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, exactly. But there are limits on that. Right. And one of the things that they point out is, when Shukov first got to the Gulag in 1943 and says his first squad leader said, here, men, we live by the law of the taiga. But even here, people manage to live. The ones that don't make it are those who lick other men's leftovers, those who count on the doctor to pull them through, and those who squeal on their buddies.
>> Goad Gatsby:Lick on their leftovers, lick other men's leftovers.
>> Grace Todd:And so this is also going to be a running theme, which is food is Obviously at a premium. Right. There is not a lot of it to go around. And there is a sort of lively bartering system wherein people are always trying to get extra food.
>> Goad Gatsby:Like eggs.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, very much.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, you know what? You've never heard of the video game Pathological, have you?
>> Grace Todd:No, I have not.
>> Goad Gatsby:It takes place in Russia.
>> Grace Todd:Oh.
>> Goad Gatsby:And there, is a weird virus coming through, and, you have to find. Find the cure and solve it, before everybody in town dies.
>> Grace Todd:Oh.
>> Goad Gatsby:And, the thing there is, is after the first day when you. When you show up, all the food, there. There's a run on the food, and you can't buy food anymore unless you have an extreme amount of money.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, yeah.
>> Goad Gatsby:And if you don't have any food, you'll just be hungry, and you can't solve things on an empty stomach.
>> Grace Todd:So our future in, like, six months.
>> Goad Gatsby:No, no, no, no, no. Because, Oh, oh, let's pivot to our ad. My Patriot supply right here. You need to get yourself buckets of food. Buckets of food and plenty of podcast. that's all you need. Back to you.
>> Grace Todd:And when you have your buckets of food, the important thing is to never lick another man's leftovers.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, well, I'm not so sure about that. Okay. Cause we're talking about leftovers. All right? He didn't want to eat those during his actual meal. You put those in the fridge. I'm, just saying, licking another man's leftovers sounds preferable to just coming in and stealing my food during dinner.
>> Grace Todd:All right, well, we'll hold off on judging it, but Ivan Denisovich at least has. Has told us that one of the ways that you lose yourself in a place like this is by stooping to licking another man's leftovers. Right? So we're. It's all about maintaining what little bit of dignity you have. Does that make sense?
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, but, you know, you're talking to a guy who eats out of a trash can.
>> Grace Todd:And I support you in that. Yeah, whatever makes you happy.
>> Goad Gatsby:Look, they weren't gonna eat it.
>> Grace Todd:If you're finding dignity in your trash can, you go to town. Unfortunately, this morning, Ivan Denisovich has woke up feeling sick.
>> Goad Gatsby:Well, yeah, he's been licking another man's leftovers.
>> Grace Todd:No, he has not. This is very important. But he is feeling feverish and achy, and he is tempted to try and get off work, essentially, for the day.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. Do they not have sick days in the, gulags?
>> Grace Todd:Well, kind of. So everyone in the barracks is starting to move. And there is a ton of detail in this book about the very minute intricacies of how the camps work, the buckets of human waste and how they're picked up and when they're taken away and all of these things. And we're not going to get into all of them because we would be here for six hours. But the camp is kind of coming to life. And the first problem of Ivan's day is that one of the work squads, and he is in the 104th, one of the work squads, is going to be sent out onto the steppe to start building the new socialist way of life settlement.
>> Goad Gatsby:All, right.
>> Grace Todd:This is bad because it is the dead of winter and there are no buildings there yet, which means that these people are being marched off into the steppe to put up the fencing and barbed wire that will then keep them in as they build the settlement itself. So there is nowhere to get warm, there is no shelter, and it's the most miserable work that anyone can do on this settlement.
>> Goad Gatsby:First of all, as if, like, zero degrees weather wasn't enough to keep people from traveling, throwing in an extra fence sounds good.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Goad Gatsby:And, what else? What else?
>> Grace Todd:oh, and you said zero. It's well below zero degrees. It's minus 40 degrees.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, okay. Well, you gotta start somewhere.
>> Grace Todd:And so Ivan's, like, chief concern right off the bat is whether or not his squad leader has managed to get their squad out of the running to be the ones who are shipped off to do the barbed wire fencing in the barren, snowy wastes.
>> Goad Gatsby:By the way, that's the classic move of like, oh, I'm, sick. I can't come into work when we're doing a suicide mission.
>> Grace Todd:Well, he's. So he's leaning on his squad leader, Chiron, who is a good squad leader, thankfully for them. And it says that this is his job to elbow some other squad, some bunch of suckers into the assignment instead of the 104th. Of course, with empty hands, you got nowhere. He'd have to take a pound of salt pork to the senior official there, if not a couple of pounds.
>> Goad Gatsby:I do like looking, for a group of suckers. All right.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, some. Some poor group of suckers is going to have to do it.
>> Goad Gatsby:But just being like, it's just putting up fencing. That's it, man. I could do that in my sleep. I say we should let some of the young guys do that.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Goad Gatsby:Give them an easy job so they can build up some experience. Hey. Huh? You over there, go build a fence.
>> Grace Todd:So Yvonne decides he's going to try and get off sick for the day because, again, he does not feel well. And it describes how they sleep. And it's like you put your jacket on your feet, you stick your feet in the sleeve of your jacket, and then you put your coat on top of you, and then you put your blanket on top of that. And if you are lucky, you won't be shivering so much that your teeth are chattering all night. If you're lucky.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right. I think you should get, like, a little special little pillow for between your teeth.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, a chattering pillow. Yeah. That's very enterprising of you.
>> Goad Gatsby:Did he write that in the book?
>> Grace Todd:No.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, I'm sure he had to leave it out for space.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. Ah, Shukov could have cleaned up. Making chattering pillows for all of the other people in his bunk.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. Thriving economy.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, exactly. And so he does, you know, he decides he's gonna go to the infirmary and see if he can get off. But while he's been sitting here dithering this whole time in bed, a guard has snuck up on him and sort of ambushed him for missing Reveley. Yeah, because of course. And he sort of hauls him out of bed and sends him off to the guard house because he's in trouble.
>> Goad Gatsby:I hate it when a guard pulls me out of my grave to tell me I have work.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, pretty much. It says, Had Shukov been punished for something he deserved, he wouldn't have felt so resentful. What hurt him was that he was always one of the first to be up. But he knew he couldn't plead with the tartar, which is the nickname for that particular guard. And protesting merely for the sake of form, he hitched up his trousers. A bedraggled scrap of cloth had been sewn on them just above the left knee, with a faded black number slipped on his jacket here. The same digits appeared twice on the chest and on the back. Fished his Valenki from the heap on the floor, put his hat on with his number on a patch of cloth at the front, and followed the tartar out of the barrack room. So all of their clothes are numbered for obvious reason.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, you don't want to be accidentally wearing someone else's underpants.
>> Grace Todd:Well, it's mostly so they can identify you at a distance, so that they can get you in trouble without having to even get close to you.
>> Goad Gatsby:Okay, I guess. You know, I never thought about why an oppressive totalitarian state would need a number, but, you know, I would like a number for all of my clothes so it doesn't get mixed in with someone else's.
>> Grace Todd:Well, and one of the things that's interesting is they make a note of the fact that this is. So this is a gulag just for political prisoners. In the other gulags that are just for regular criminals, they don't have numbers. So this is just something that they do for the political dissidents.
>> Goad Gatsby:Ooh, yeah, you're a special prisoner.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. Those no good anti communists. Luckily for Shukov, it turns out that the guard was fucking with him just because he wanted someone to come wash the floors of the guard house.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right, all right, so I. I can relate. I can relate. Do you know how many times I have captured a person and made them do my housework?
>> Grace Todd:How many times have you done that?
>> Goad Gatsby:I don't think I should give you that number for legal reasons.
>> Grace Todd:I don't think that's a thing you should be doing, buddy. You can just hire a cleaning service. You don't need to be shanghaiing people off of the streets of Richmond. Look, is this a kink thing?
>> Goad Gatsby:No, no, no, no.
>> Grace Todd:Tell us.
>> Goad Gatsby:It's a power thing here.
>> Grace Todd:Okay, well, isn't that kind of the same thing?
>> Goad Gatsby:No, no, no, it's different. Clearly, I can just afford to have. Or I can just do it myself. But you know what? I think if I tell somebody that if they do not vacuum that little four foot carpet I have right there, then they're going back to the gulag. I feel a little bit more powerful that way. They feel like they're not going to the gulag. Everybody wins.
>> Grace Todd:I'll take your word for it. And so Shukov, luckily, is not put in the guardhouse, which would have been a huge bummer.
>> Goad Gatsby:Why?
>> Grace Todd:Because the guardhouse is even worse than being loose in the barracks. Sorry, he's not put in, like, the. He's not in proper trouble. I phrased that poorly. There are cells adjacent to the guardhouse that he could have been locked in, but they just needed him to wash the floors. They were just grabbing someone, some unfortunate dude, the first dude to irritate the tartar, and it's like, great, go scrub a floor.
>> Goad Gatsby:Okay, so he was just like, as a practical joke, like, I'm getting my pal here to scrub the floors, but I'm gonna make him think that he's in way more trouble.
>> Grace Todd:Mm, no, it's more just like, I, need somebody to scrub the floors. So the first unlucky bastard who happens to do some minor infraction in front of me is gonna get yoinked.
>> Goad Gatsby:But yeah, okay, so he's not in any real trouble. He's just scrubbed the floor is trouble.
>> Grace Todd:Correct, thankfully, which is a relief. And they tartar. The tartar, tartar. The tartar, tartare. And the guards are all of course kicked up in the guard house and it's really warm and cozy and they're just sitting around shooting the shit with each other. And one of them accuses him of doing a bad job and specifically says, didn't you ever watch your wife scrub the floor, pig? Shukov drew himself up, the dripping rag in his hand. He smiled, revealing the gaps in his teeth, the result of a touch of scurvy at USHT Ishma in 1943. And what a touch it was. His exhausted stomach wouldn't hold any kind of food and his bowels could move nothing but a bloody fluid. But now only a lisp remained from that old trouble. I was taken away from my wife in 41 Citizen Chief. I've forgotten what she was like. And then the guards go on to essentially say that all of these, you know, these scum prisoners, they don't know how to do a thing and don't want to learn they're not worth the bread we give them. We ought to feed them on shit. So it's a great environment.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, yeah, yeah. First of all, that's very motivating.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Goad Gatsby:you know what they, what they teach you in, in motivation school is tell them that there's room for improvement. Mm m. Tell them how they can improve and what they can look forward to it. All right, so you know, you see this guy with, with his teeth, with like half of his teeth missing and be like don't you? Don't. Didn't you ever see your wife clean and be like ahaha. You've broken any memories of my wife out of my body.
>> Grace Todd:I haven't seen my wife in eight years. But and this is the sort of one of the recurring themes. This is obviously a miserable place, but like he has learned the rules of it. And it says work was like a stick, it had two ends. When you worked for the knowing, you gave them quality. When you worked for a fool, you simply gave him eyewash. Otherwise everybody would have croaked long ago. They all knew that. And so because these guards are idiots, he just sort of like gives the floor a quick once over with a wet rag and then is like bye and makes a run for the mess hall. Because it's breakfast.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. It is still not light outside yet, by the way. It doesn't say exactly what time they woke them up, but we are. It is pre dawn still. And now comes one of the three top points of Yvonne's Day. Can you guess what they are?
>> Goad Gatsby:is it breakfast, lunch and dinner?
>> Grace Todd:That is correct, yes.
>> Goad Gatsby:To be fair, those are also like, well, just lunch and dinner. I'm not much of a breakfast guy.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, I'm not either.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. So it would be like lunch, dinner, and then ice cream.
>> Grace Todd:There you go. Lunch. Yeah. Yeah. Similarly, Yvonne has either learned through deprivation or taught himself to absolutely savor any and all of the food he's given, even if it's objectively pretty shitty food.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, that's what, that's what I learned when I was, in high school.
>> Grace Todd:Were you in a gulag in high school? were they starving you and feeding you nothing but cabbage soup and putrid fish?
>> Goad Gatsby:No, but I think maybe it was the same company that ran that gulag that provided my cafeteria services.
>> Grace Todd:Oh. Nettle soup, boiled carrots. And we get another one of those interesting little notes about the sort of inherent etiquette in this camp. So he runs for the mess hall. He lucks out. The timing works out nicely. He gets his thing, he sits down, and they're eating this sort of thin soup that they're given which has little fish in it. And you, you know, because you only have a very little amount of food. They're savoring all of the meat off of these tiny little fish bones. And it says when the bones formed a heap and it was the turn of another squad, someone would sweep them off and they'd be trodden into a mush on the floor. But it was considered bad manners to spit the fishbones straight out on the floor. So again, there's this, like, in camp etiquette that is part of how these men are making themselves feel like people. And there's a. There are a bunch of little examples of this, right? You don't spit your fishbones directly on the floor because that would be gauche and rude. And similarly, Ivan says that no matter how cold it is, he has never been able to get in the habit of eating with his hat on.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, yeah. Bad manners it is.
>> Grace Todd:So we are introduced to some of his squad mates, and one of them, Fetyukov. I'm sorry, Fetyukov.
>> Goad Gatsby:I'm sorry.
>> Grace Todd:I almost killed you with that one.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. Ooh.
>> Grace Todd:He is like the squad sniveler.
>> Goad Gatsby:He's the Little brown noser.
>> Grace Todd:Ferrety rat. Like he is a man who licks other people's leftovers.
>> Goad Gatsby:Have you ever seen the show Recess?
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Goad Gatsby:The. What's his name? Randy. The guy who.
>> Grace Todd:Randall.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:he's a little more pathetic even than Randall, I think, because he doesn't appear to be a snitch. He just has absolutely no self respect.
>> Goad Gatsby:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:And Fetyukov is sort of the. The bottom man on the rung in the squad. And that's nice for Shukov because it means that Fetyukov has gotten his breakfast for him, which is nice. So there are. There are ranks here, right? In the squad, there's sort of a rung. There are natural rungs on the ladder. And they are assigned kind of based on respect rather than anything having to do with their lives outside of the camp.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe.
>> Grace Todd:And, this is where we learn that Ivan Denisovich's probably. It seems like one of his most important belongings is. Is a spoon that he made himself out of aluminum wire. And it's very special to him because they don't have silverware in these places.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right, so you just gotta eat your little fish. Fish soup with your little electrical wire. Homemade spoon.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. If you're lucky enough to have a homemade spoon.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Because one of the things that we are learning about Shukov is that he's pretty handy, Right. He's a man with skills.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. No sporks.
>> Grace Todd:No sporks. They appear it. I think it's either you figure out your own silverware or you eat with your hands. And again. And this is gonna kind of be like the bell we keep ringing. It's all about maintaining what little bit of dignity you can scrape out for yourself. So a spoon is pretty exciting.
>> Goad Gatsby:What if they just, like, stopped over at, like, McDonald's and just, like, just took a couple forks?
>> Grace Todd:I don't know why they didn't think of that.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. Why didn't they go to the Kazakhstan McDonald's?
>> Grace Todd:So it says, apart from sleep, the only time a prisoner lives for himself is 10 minutes in the morning at breakfast, 5 minutes over dinner, and 5 at supper. The stew was the same every day. Its composition depended on the kind of vegetable provided that winter. Nothing but salted carrots last year, which meant that from September to June, the stew was plain carrot. This year it was black cabbage. The most nourishing time of the year was June. Then all the vegetables came to an end and were replaced by grits. The worst time was July. Then they shredded nettles into the pot. So they are being given just the absolute barest minimum to keep them alive. Maybe.
>> Goad Gatsby:Maybe. If you call that living.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, pretty much. And so he savors his little fish.
>> Goad Gatsby:Savors his little fish.
>> Grace Todd:He savors the little fish. He sucks the meat off of every last little bone. And then he decides to make a run for the infirmary because he's still not feeling well.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Grace Todd:He's got the aches and the shivers.
>> Goad Gatsby:But he's still gotta have his five minutes of pleasure. Yes or no? Ten minutes is breakfast.
>> Grace Todd:Ah, ten whole minutes at breakfast. Life of luxury. The next time you're eating a meal, I want you to just think about that. And so he literally has to make a run for it. Because one of the regulations in this camp is that you are not supposed to ever be going anywhere on your own as a prisoner. And that is wildly impractical. And the kind of thing that is not enforced until it is arbitrarily. Right. This is the, kind of environment we're in.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, you should. Yeah. You're apparently a big time criminal. The, you know, super villain. We have you locked up in here. What do you mean? You're just gonna walk around, do whatever you want?
>> Grace Todd:And on top of that, there's a new regulation where you had to take off your hat to a guard five paces before passing him and replace it two paces after. There were guards who slopped past as if blind, not caring a damn. But for others, the new rule was a godsend. So they're constantly kind of adding these nonsense rules. Yeah, and in part, it's because the whole system hinges on arbitrary cruelty. That's how you keep people in line. That's how you keep them demoralized and frightened and keep them from pushing back is by constantly instituting new stupid rules. Like the hat thing.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. Where it sounds. It sounds like those guards don't. Most of the guards don't even care. But. But some of them, some of them are like, ooh, it's like making a stranger vacuum my carpet.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, exactly. You make them take their hat off when they do it.
>> Goad Gatsby:Or like, Well, I'm just convinced that most of the guards are like, cut it out, man. I'm just trying to do guard work here. Stop taking your hat off at me every time you walk by.
>> Grace Todd:No, the guards are mostly monsters, okay? They're gremlins. They're all power mad. Because it's important to remember that they are also trapped in a giant arbitrary power structure that will lash out at them almost without provocation.
>> Goad Gatsby:So just like American Department of Corrections officers.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. Everyone in this novel is in fight or flight mode at all times.
>> Goad Gatsby:Okay. What a great system they have here.
>> Grace Todd:It's so good.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, keep going, Keep going. I want to learn more about this finest, system in the world.
>> Grace Todd:So he makes it to the infirmary. He hides from a couple of guards on the way, just because he's like, I can't even deal with this hat thing. I do not have the time. He makes it to the infirmary, and he interrupts not the doctor, because the doctors are apparently still in bed. Must be nice. But the medical assistant who is on shift, Kolya, who he catches in the act of writing what is clearly poetry.
>> Goad Gatsby:Is that allowed?
>> Grace Todd:Well, it says he realized at once, of course, that Kolia was not doing official work, but something on the side, but that was none of Ivan's business. And we find out later that Kolya is. Was a student who was arrested for political reasons. And the doctor, the doctor on duty in the camp has essentially sort of lifted him out from among the common prisoners and made him a medical assistant, even though he has absolutely no medical knowledge, because he sort of sees the artist's spirit within him and fancies himself a lover of literature.
>> Goad Gatsby:Okay. Or, this is the best I can get.
>> Grace Todd:It says, ah, as can happen only in camps. Stepan Grigoriich.
>> Goad Gatsby:That's not a name.
>> Grace Todd:The doctor had advised Kolya to describe himself as a medical assistant, had taken him on at the infirmary and taught him to make intravenous injections on ignorant prisoners to whose innocent minds it would never occur that Kolya wasn't a medical assistant at all. The doctor wanted Kolya to write when in prison what he'd been given no opportunity to write in freedom. So Kolya, the medical assistant, frustrated writer, and now it seems pretty incompetent medical personnel because Yvonne shows up and is like, I do not feel good. And he says, why didn't you tell me this last night? It's too late now. I can only give you an exemption for the work of the day if you come to me. The night before, there were only two exemptions allowed, and I've already done them.
>> Goad Gatsby:Sucks to suck, but only two exemptions a day sounds. I don't know, maybe. Have they heard about how, like, flu outbreaks work?
>> Grace Todd:They do not care.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, okay.
>> Grace Todd:And he basically, he's like, the sick list has already been sent to the planning department. And it says a little bit later, essentially, that he had Already written them down and done the forms. And then he had drawn like a nice tidy line under it in his book. And so he doesn't want to with it.
>> Goad Gatsby:I. I agree. I don't want to. I would rather send sick people out into negative 40 degrees than have to adjust this little line here.
>> Grace Todd:That is the overwhelming impression given by just about every official we meet in this book. Yes.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, yeah, it's. Do you know how hard it is to erase a pen line?
>> Grace Todd:it's impossible, basically. Yeah. And I mean, you can try, but you're just going to mess up your paper.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, exactly.
>> Grace Todd:So he takes Ivan's temperature and it's 99 degrees.
>> Goad Gatsby:Ooh.
>> Grace Todd:And he's like, too bad for you. Like, it's neither here nor there. You're not sick enough. And he tells him that he can take a risk and stay in the infirmary, but if the doctor, who is again still in bed, decides that Ivan is not sick, he will be retroactively punished for shirking. So those are his choices.
>> Goad Gatsby:I guess I'll die.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. Especially because the doctor is a fussy, loud voiced fellow who gave neither himself nor his patients any peace. He invented jobs in and around the infirmary for all the patients who could stand on their feet, fencing the garden, laying paths, bringing soil to the flower beds, and in wintertime, erecting snow barriers. Work, he said, was a first rate medicine for any illness.
>> Goad Gatsby:But Shukov thinks that's what my abusive stepfather would always say.
>> Grace Todd:All right, well, the next line is, you can overwork a horse to death. That doctor ought to understand. If he'd been sweating blood, laying bricks, he'd quiet down. You could be sure of that.
>> Goad Gatsby:So, sweating blood, laying bricks.
>> Grace Todd:Yep.
>> Goad Gatsby:Wait, is that a real medical condition?
>> Grace Todd:What, sweating blood?
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:I don't know.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. Look, I'm no doctor, but I think that is a condition that calls for not laying bricks.
>> Grace Todd:Don't you sweat blood when you have Ebola? Doesn't it just kind of come out of everything?
>> Goad Gatsby:I told you, I'm not a doctor.
>> Grace Todd:Fair enough. And so Shukov is kind of given this choice. You know, you can, you can try and see if the doctor will decide you're sick, but if he doesn't, you're going to get in trouble. And so Shukov gives up, says he said nothing. He didn't even nod. Pulling his hat over his eyes, he walked out. How can you expect a man who's warm to understand a man who's cold?
>> Goad Gatsby:That, that is what I tell my snowman every day.
>> Grace Todd:That you'll never understand him.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That snowman will never know what it's like.
>> Grace Todd:It's true.
>> Goad Gatsby:To sit down at the beach and have a nice pina colada.
>> Grace Todd:He'll never know. I mean, he could experience it, but very briefly.
>> Goad Gatsby:on the other hand, I don't know what it's like to be outside 247 in freezing weather.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Goad Gatsby:And always have a little, five pieces of coal as a smile.
>> Grace Todd:That's true.
>> Goad Gatsby:So, look, we're very different, and we need to celebrate those differences and not make them lay bricks while they're deathly sick.
>> Grace Todd:While I was reading this book, I was, like, sitting on my couch in my house and at one point was like, ooh, I'm so chilly. And then I was like, girl, girl, you are reading a book about people almost dying in negative 40 degree weather. Anyway, so we're gonna. We're gonna go for it.
>> Goad Gatsby:Let's go for it.
>> Grace Todd:We stop and get our bread ration.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right?
>> Grace Todd:Our bread ration is never as big as it's supposed to be. And it says he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul. Today, maybe they haven't snitched any. And he decides that his ration is exactly half an ounce short. So this is how dialed in this man is. on bread weights.
>> Goad Gatsby:It sounds like me when I go and get a quarter pounder with cheese and, like, actually, this is only, I'm trying to do the math on how much a quarter pounder is.
>> Grace Todd:Like, these beef patties do not weigh a quarter pound.
>> Goad Gatsby:Actually, this is only 2 ounces of beef.
>> Grace Todd:All right, so we get our bread ration, and good news. The squad leader has kept them from having to go be the barbed wire losers. Suffering, which is great. Tyrann, the squad leader, is like a genuinely good guy. And Shukov and everyone else in the 104th kind of worship him and definitely think of and treat him a little bit like a father. Like, he is a beloved authority figure to them, and he is important to them because the work leader, the squad leader is both the person who arranges your work assignments and does the paperwork that controls how much you get fit fed, because everyone is fed in proportion to the amount of work that they have done.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right? Yeah, so that sounds like why he's getting short shortchanged on his bread.
>> Grace Todd:No, they're Just getting shortchanged because.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, okay.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. No, you just always get shortchanged. Everything is the other sort of thread that runs through this is just like everything is corrupt. Right. Like, everyone is always taking a little bit of something for themselves. The cooks are shortchanging the food so that they can eat more of it. That kind of thing. Like, nothing is ever the way it's supposed to be.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right, all right. So it's just. It's just shit salad all the way down.
>> Grace Todd:It is shit salad all the way down. And the only thing you have is your self respect.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right.
>> Grace Todd:Which is when we catch back up with Fetyukov, who is committing the cardinal sin of standing next to someone who is smoking. Cesar, who's the sort of squad intellectual.
>> Goad Gatsby:We gotta. If you can't have your own cigarettes, you gotta smell someone else's cigarettes pretty much.
>> Grace Todd:And Cesar is very lucky. He has people on the outside who are sending him expensive parcels pretty consistently. So he always has tobacco, and he has more and better food than everyone else. And he has better outerwear than everyone else.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. He especially needs those numbers to not be like, that's me.
>> Grace Todd:So Shukov, they're gearing up to be shipped out for their work assignment for the day. And Shukov sees Cesar smoking and sort of angles himself to be like, next to him, but he's sort of pointedly staring past him. And this goes back to that sort of self respect thing. Right. So the idea is he's putting himself there because he is hoping Cesar will give him the butt of his cigarette. Fetyukov is also standing right there, and he is staring at Cesar's mouth. Right. Do you see the sort of the self respect distinction here? And Fetychukov ultimately can't help himself. And it says he's like, literally kind of drooling. And he's finally like, cesar, let me get that. And Cesar very deliberately takes the butt of his cigarette out of the cigarette holder and gives it to Shukov.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right, Again, those aren't real names, so it's hard for me to follow.
>> Grace Todd:The point is that Fetychukov is being consistently punished for his own lack of self respect.
>> Goad Gatsby:Ah.
>> Grace Todd:But we're headed off for our work assignment for the day. And on his way out, Ivan breaks his bread into pieces and sews a piece of it into his mattress.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And hopes that it will be there when he gets back. And there's an anecdote he tells that there was a while where they made everyone and the squad keep their Bread in, like, communal boxes. And it was a huge pain in the ass. And you had to take a, like a hopefully weirdly enough shaped bite out of it that you'd be able to identify it afterwards.
>> Goad Gatsby:That's what I do.
>> Grace Todd:And Sushov thinks about the fact that you would spend all day thinking about your bread and hoping that someone else didn't wind up with your piece. Cause it was your piece.
>> Goad Gatsby:Again, that's licking leftovers.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. But ultimately, luckily, three prisoners escaped with one of the boxes. And so the guards smashed up all the boxes and burned them. And now you are back to being in charge of your own bread.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, okay. how would you set your bread up to be identifiable?
>> Grace Todd:Oh, I don't. I think I'd give up. I'm the kind of person who does not that level of stress over something that cruelly petty. I think I would just shut down. I'd be like. I don't know, I've.
>> Goad Gatsby:I would, just press my thumb into the middle of it.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, just like poke a hole in it.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. Ah. I don't know how small the bread.
>> Grace Todd:Is, but yeah, it's very dense. I get the impression it's.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Almost more cracker.
>> Goad Gatsby:Like, you know, maybe that wouldn't work.
>> Grace Todd:Kind of dry. Everyone gets searched on the way out. Cesar is wearing a forbidden extra vest. And one of the other men in the squad, Buinovsky. Buinovski. Sorry, One of the other men in the squad.
>> Goad Gatsby:That's not a name. That's not a name.
>> Grace Todd:Buinovski is a former naval captain and he gets mad that they are being searched and stripped out in the cold and starts trying to, like, cite different art. He's like, this is a violation of article. This article that good for him. It does not end well. He is sentenced to 10 days in the cells, starting that evening.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, after he comes back from freezing to death.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, correct. You get in trouble. They always do it after your work detail for the day because they want to get that last day of work out of you first. They're formed into a column. The escort guard recites what Shukov thinks of as the morning prayer, which is marching. Orders must be strictly obeyed. Keep to your ranks. No hurrying. Keep a steady pace. No talking. Keep your eyes fix ahead and your hands behind your backs. A step to right or left is considered an attempt to escape. And the escort has orders to shoot without warning.
>> Goad Gatsby:That's. Yeah, that's what I would tell people to keep. Literally to keep them in line.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Goad Gatsby:But it also Seems very, very, inefficient. You just shoot everybody that goes one step off, you're not gonna have your frozen fences.
>> Grace Todd:Well, it seems to be working okay. I guess we don't know how many people get shot for accidentally coming out of fences the column. But this is how they are marched from the camp to the power plant that they are building very inefficiently. We're marching along, and everyone is lost in their own thoughts. And this is where we kind of cut back into the life that he led before he was in the Gulag. It says a new year, 1951, had begun, and Shukov had the right to two letters that year. He had sent his last letter in July and got an answer to it in October. Ivan Shukov had left home on June 23, 1941. On the previous Sunday, the people who'd been to Polomnia to attend mass had said war. At Polomnia, they'd learned it at the post office. But at Temna Novo, no one had a radio in those days. Now, his wife wrote, the radio roared in every cottage. It was piped in. There was little sense in writing. There is no answer. You couldn't write and describe the squad you were working with and what kind of squad leader Andrey Prokofievich was just now. He had a good deal more to talk about with Kylgas and the Lett than with his family at home. Neither did the two letters a year they sent him throw much light on the way they were living. The farm had a new chairman, as if that hadn't happened regularly. It had been amalgamated with the neighboring farms. That had happened before, too, but afterward they reduced it to its former condition. And what else? The farmers were failing to fulfill their quota of work days, where the individual plots had been cut down to one third of an acre and some people's right back to the cottage walls. But the biggest thing that he can't wrap his mind around is that his wife has, you know, in these extremely intermittent letters, because he only gets two a year, has written that all of the young people in his village are gone. They've all gone to factories. They've all gone to find a living somewhere else. And that from when all of the men left for war in 1941, the village and the farms are still being maintained by the same women who were left behind then. It is now 1950. It's been a solid decade, and it is the wives and the old women.
>> Goad Gatsby:And they're not meeting their quotas.
>> Grace Todd:They are not meeting their Quotas.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. I think there's just poor planning going on here in the Soviet Union. Somebody's got to go in and look at their books.
>> Grace Todd:It's rough stuff.
>> Goad Gatsby:I think if they just curb their expectations, they might be able to get through things here.
>> Grace Todd:It says there are only two men of working age left, so it's not. It's not great.
>> Goad Gatsby:I will say those two guys right there, they gotta be around so many women with all their husbands and gulags. I think, you know, these guys are getting it.
>> Grace Todd:Unfortunately, one of them is 84, although he did get married recently, apparently.
>> Goad Gatsby:He's getting it.
>> Grace Todd:He's getting it. And one of the things that Shukov is kind of meditating on is that the traditional crafts that this area was known for, the baskets, the carpentry, the fine woodwork, have gone completely extinct. And his wife writes to him saying that when he gets out, she is hoping against hope that he's going to become a carpet painter, which is the new big fad. Using stencils on sheets to make imitation, like, nice carpets.
>> Goad Gatsby:Okay, so he's gonna make the Mona Lisa on, on a carpet.
>> Grace Todd:And he's not. He's not particularly tempted by this?
>> Goad Gatsby:Well, you know what? He may not seem tempting right now, but I think when he gets out, when he's no longer eating, you know, little tiny fishes and nettles, maybe. Maybe he'll come around and see things.
>> Grace Todd:Well, I think partly. I, think that this is Solzhenitsyn. Shukov has been left behind in a way, like.
>> Goad Gatsby:Like a rapture.
>> Grace Todd:Society has changed very, very quickly, and it no longer makes any sense to him. And on top of that, there's something that's been lost. And. And I think Solzhenitsyn is partly trying to show us that someone like Shukov is in a unique position to see what is being lost. Right. Like, this whole carpet thing is apparently very lucrative. It's completely unskilled. it doesn't require any artistry. It's mass production. It's still mass production by hand, but it's mass production of a cheap consumer good.
>> Goad Gatsby:Is it just like filling in the stencil?
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And Shukov, for his part, can't see the point in it. It doesn't make any sense to him. He. He's a carpenter. He's a tradesman. He's a person who is used to working with his hands. He doesn't say it in as many words, but you can tell that the prospect of life as a stenciler of sheets is very empty to him. And even for a man who is trapped in this horrific situation, looking forward to that.
>> Goad Gatsby:Feels he's gotta have his dignity.
>> Grace Todd:Exactly. But we don't have too much time to be thinking about carpet painting because.
>> Goad Gatsby:We gotta build a fence.
>> Grace Todd:Because we gotta go. No, we don't. Thank God. We don't have to build a fence. We have to build a wall and a power plant.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, you're right.
>> Grace Todd:Thank God we've never gotten the hang of bribing people.
>> Goad Gatsby:There should be like a seminar on.
>> Grace Todd:How to bribe poor Shukov. It expressly says, sort of the wrap up of the section about the carpet painting is that the other thing about these traveling carpet painters is that they need to be the kind of people who are, like, very personable and very brash and who are good at bribes. And Shukav, even in the eight years he has been living in gulags, has never learned the art of bribing people. He just can't do it. So we get to the work site and there is a lot of back and forth about the work site and a lot of detail that we kind of need to yada yada a little bit. But. But the most important kind of takeaway is that it is wildly inefficient because they have not given these men adequate tools and supplies. And obviously they are all prison labor. Like, these are people who do not want to be doing what they're doing. They're doing it in horrible conditions. They are exhausted. They are demoralized. And so the job site is just wildly inefficient. Like, there's. There are all of these little bits of them, like, knocking apart things that are important so that they can fill the wood stoves, because they need to have the wood stoves running so they can keep the mortar from freezing. Because again, it is now 20 below zero. And it's a massive waste of, like, everyone's intellect and resources and money. It is a stupid, stupid way to try and build things.
>> Goad Gatsby:I do enjoy breaking down walls. So you're warm when you're making another wall.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, it's all that kind of stu. I mean, like, they are laying bricks in a partially finished building and the lift is broken. And so they are having to get bricks up three flights of scaffolding by hand.
>> Goad Gatsby:Okay. Which is a thing you can do.
>> Grace Todd:Super efficient.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:So they all get in place and they're solving all of these, just dumb problems. Like there's no windows in the building and they have to keep the mortar thawed, so they steal roofing felt from a different part of the job site to cover the windows up, to try and keep it a little warmer, that kind of thing. And we meet a couple more of the squad mates. So we've got, Buonovsky, as we just said before, who's the naval captain who has gotten himself in trouble. And the poor guy, the reason he is in the prison camp is because during the war he was put on like, assignment on an English naval ship because, you know, the English and the Russians were working together to try and fight the Nazis.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And when he got back home, the English admiral with whom he'd served sent him a gift. Yeah, he.
>> Goad Gatsby:He shouldn't have been friends with, with. First of all, English. Terrible. It was his fault for being friends with an Englishman.
>> Grace Todd:And then we meet Senka, who, Shukov seems very protective of. And Senka has, I think, maybe the most tragic story of any of the men in the camp. He was a World War II veteran.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. As one is during this time period.
>> Grace Todd:Most of them also a lot of the people in this camp are expressly in the camp because of things that happened during the war. And one of the things that we find out is that prisoners of war, basically all prisoners of war, were considered suspect. They were considered spies. If you were captured by the Germans when you were released, you weren't released.
>> Goad Gatsby:It was just a changing of custody.
>> Grace Todd:So Sanka was captured, escaped, recaptured, and sent to Buchenwald, which was one of the. Not that there were any better concentration camps, but. But was, pretty horrific. So this poor man survived the Buchenwald concentration camp. and it says that he helped with the famous riot at, ah, the Buchenwald concentration camp. And when the war ended, it was gulag time.
>> Goad Gatsby:Well, they're just worried that he's going to be. He had been brainwashed and will activate as a sleeper cell. How do they know that that's not a real thing yet?
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, that's definitely a thing you have to worry about. And unfortunately, because of all the things he's been through, he's basically deaf, which is the other reason that they are all pretty protective of him. he's an old, quiet man who has just been through a lot of shit.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So get to the part where we're good, where like, good things happen.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, did you think there was gonna be a part where good things happen?
>> Goad Gatsby:Look, I know how books work, all right? At some point there's gonna be a resolution and a happy ending.
>> Grace Todd:Is There, though.
>> Goad Gatsby:Look, I'm very optimistic. Keep reading.
>> Grace Todd:I'm sorry. Are you familiar with classic literature? There's much back and forth, and it isn't until after lunch that they really, like, get to work. so they, they figured out how they're going to do this whole thing. They're building this building. They're going to have to run all of the bricks up the scaffolding by hand. It says you don't have to be very bright to carry a hand barrow. So the squad leader gave such work to people who'd been in positions of authority. Fetyukov had been a big shot in some office with a car at his disposal. And that's why he's so gross and has no self respect, I guess. So basically, they get everything in place and then they stop for lunch. We love to stop for lunch.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, it's. It's my second favorite five minutes of the day.
>> Grace Todd:And we find out why Shukov himself is in prison. And it's the same thing with the prisoner of war problem. It says, according to his dossier, Ivan Denisovich Shukov had been sentenced for high treason. He had testified to it himself. Yes, he'd surrendered to the Germans with the intention of betraying his country. And he'd returned from captivity to carry out a mission for German intelligence. What sort of m mission? Neither Shukov nor the interrogator could say. So it had been left at that a mission. Shukov had figured it all out. If he didn't sign, he'd be shot. If he signed, he'd still get a chance to live. So he signed. But what had really happened was in February 1942, their whole army was surrounded on the northwest front. No food was parachuted to them. There were no planes. Things got so bad that they were scraping the hooves of dead horses. The horn could be soaked in water and eaten. Their ammunition was gone, so the Germans rounded them up in the forest a few at a time. Shukov was in one of these groups and remained in German captivity for a day OR2. Then five of them managed to escape. By a miracle, they reached their own lines. A machine gunner shot two of them on the spot. A, third died of his wounds, but two got through. Had they been wiser, they'd have said they'd been wandering through the forest and then nothing would have happened. But they told the truth. They had said they were escaped prisoners of war. Prisoners of war, you f ers. If all five of them had got through, their statements could have been found to tally. And they Might have been believed, but with two, it was hopeless. You've put your damned heads together and cooked up that escape story they were told. And that is how Shukov wound up in the gulag.
>> Goad Gatsby:all of this could have been so easily avoided if they were better liars. Look, they do not reward the truth here in the Soviet Union. They certainly don't reward that in Germany.
>> Grace Todd:Well, and one of the things that is really important to remember here is the sheer breadth and power of the propaganda that they were all exposed to. All of these men finding themselves kind of caught up in this system, are kind of taken aback by it. I mean, like, it. You can tell that they know or knew that they lived in a society where it could be dangerous to do the wrong thing or have the wrong opinion. But each of them, to a man you can tell, kind of believed. Like. But, no, this is so reasonable. Right? Like what? like, why would you put me in a gulag for being a prisoner of war? I have another guy with me. We were like, what. What do you mean, you think we're spies? That's crazy. This could never. Like, this is an insane thing for someone to do. Like, you can know something intellectually, but it's really hard to know it emotionally.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. Or they could just be better liars.
>> Grace Todd:Is that how you're gonna stay out of the gulags?
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. They said, like, we pretended to get captured just so we could kill 50 Nazis.
>> Grace Todd:That's. Yeah, that would have been a good lie.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:It probably would not have worked.
>> Goad Gatsby:Well, the other. The other thing clearly didn't work either.
>> Grace Todd:and then the other thing that we find out is that there's been a new thing happening in camp, which is that men who have been marked as squealers, people who are ratting out other men to the authorities, have been turning up dead in their bunks.
>> Goad Gatsby:Ooh.
>> Grace Todd:So it's a little development.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. I think, being a squealer is sort of like a big health risk. All right.
>> Grace Todd:It does seem to be, especially in the gulag.
>> Goad Gatsby:If I was an insurance company, I would not be covering any squealers.
>> Grace Todd:No.
>> Goad Gatsby:Now. But I think it's just because to start off with, they had really weak hearts, so they're subject to, you know, heart attacks.
>> Grace Todd:Do you find yourself processing insurance claims on Soviet dissident political prisoners often?
>> Goad Gatsby:No. No, I don't. It's a. I would have to pay those claims out really quickly.
>> Grace Todd:We get a break for lunch, which they call dinner. In a way that drives me Nuts. I always have such a hard time with that. I don't know why. It's not that crazy. Lots of cultures and times use dinner for lunch, it's fine. But Shukov, by being very clever, manages to get two extra portions of food for the squad. Yes. And that means one of them is for him. And Fechukov thinks that he's gonna get one, and he does not, because no one likes him. So that's an exciting development for the day.
>> Goad Gatsby:All that extra little fish soup.
>> Grace Todd:And the other extra portion goes to Bujnowski, the naval captain, because they're all kind of trying to look out for.
>> Goad Gatsby:Him, trying to look after him because he's about to spend 10 days in the brig.
>> Grace Todd:They're trying to look after him because he is in the process of learning how to be a prisoner.
>> Goad Gatsby:Ah. so he's also sort of the new guy.
>> Grace Todd:He's the new guy, but he specifically. He's a good guy. He's an honest guy. He's used to. To being in command of people.
>> Goad Gatsby:Have you ever seen the movie the Last Castle?
>> Grace Todd:No.
>> Goad Gatsby:It's about an American prison camp for ex military people.
>> Grace Todd:Oh.
>> Goad Gatsby:they're not allowed to have salutes in there. So, what they do here is they put their hands on their forehead, and then they swipe their hair upwards, like, oh, just checking my hair.
>> Grace Todd:That's very clever.
>> Goad Gatsby:And there's a, general who refuses to do. Who refuses an order to do a war crime. And so he, winds up in the prison. Yeah. And he organizes a prison strike. Yeah. Last Castle. the warden is, Toni, Soprano.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, fun.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, the movie's a blast. They have more jokes in there than this, but it's okay.
>> Grace Todd:All right. Sounds good. Yeah. And Buoynowski, there's a passage that he's. He's there in the canteen. He's finished eating, and he's just sitting for a minute, even though he shouldn't be. He's, like, in people's way. And you can tell this is kind of something that he normally would have, like, jumped up and gotten. He's like. He's a naval officer, you know. Like, he's very by the book. And it says he was unused to the hard life of the zechs, which is the Russian for prisoner. Though he didn't know it. Moments like this were particularly important for him, for they were transforming him from an eager, confident naval officer with a ringing voice into an inert, though wary Zek. And only in that inertness lay the chance of surviving the 25 years of imprisonment he'd been sentenced to. So he's learning slowly. And one of the big things that he is learning that they, that Shukov has learned, that seems so important and is kind of emphasized over and over again, is you cannot completely give up. You cannot run yourself into the wall. You have to sort of know when to step up for your fellow men and when to sort of metaphorically go limp in the face of the bureaucracy that you're being crushed by.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, there are times where, everybody's got a. Gotta pull together. And then when a guard says, take your cap off and bow to me, you do it.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Goad Gatsby:Not that you particularly want to do it. You know, you just pick your battles.
>> Grace Todd:You do. You gotta pick your battles. And Shukov takes Cesar's lunch to him, and Cesar is having like a very high blown intellectual discussion with another one of the prisoners. who's. Cause Cesar, of course, has been stationed in the office. He gets to be warm, he gets to do paperwork. And they are arguing about a different Russian author and whether it the sort of core of the argument. And this is where you can see Solzhenitsyn sort of playing with some of these ideas that he expresses more fully later in other works. What they are debating is whether a genius is still a genius if he is willing to alter his art in order to please a tyrant.
>> Goad Gatsby:You want me to answer that?
>> Grace Todd:I mean, you can.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, maybe.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, maybe. I think the conclusion of this book is maybe. I think Solzhenitsyn's later work has significantly stronger viewpoints on all of that. But then it's finally time to get to work, actually. To work.
>> Goad Gatsby:Finally. they're not even worth the bread we give them.
>> Grace Todd:I know, right? Should feed them on shit. And this, I think, is one of the more interesting things about the book. So again, there's. We're really emphasizing like, this is not an efficient way to work. And so there's a lot of dithering. And he really digs into the details of like how they are having to fight to make the work conditions feasible. Not even comfortable, just to like, like the literal logistics of it. The stoves that have to be running to keep the mortar warm and the bricks and you have to. And Shukov has like the only good mason's trowel in the camp that he has stolen and hidden for his own use.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Because all the tools have to get turned in at the end of the day. And it's just.
>> Goad Gatsby:And also trowel seems like A weapon?
>> Grace Todd:That too, yeah. But all the tools have to be accounted for, and they're all shit tools. And so the first time Shukov got a good, good mason's trowel, he tricked the storemaster into thinking it had been returned and then hid it.
>> Goad Gatsby:that reminds me of the old joke of a man with a wheelbarrow full of sawdust. You know, he would take it out of the job site every day and they'd check it to see if he was stealing any tools. So he would do that every day. They're like, this is just so unusual. And come to find out, you know, it was his last day. they're like, I gotta know, man. What have you been doing, man? have you been stealing tools from us? No, I've been stealing wheelbarrows from you.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, exactly. That. That's. He would have made a good zek. So they finally, like, there's so much back and forth, and they finally, like, they get everything locked in and the squad can actually, like, start. And Shukov is a mason, and he's a skilled mason, and. And one of the reasons that he is fairly lucky, as these men go, is because he has this skill. And skilled labor is paid better in food, right? And they get everything into place and they start working. And it says. And now Shukov was no longer seeing that distant view where sun gleamed on snow. He was no longer seeing the prisoners as they wandered from the warming up places all over the site. Some to hack away at the holes they hadn't finished this morning, some to fix the mesh reinforcement, some to put up beams in the workshops. Shukov was seeing only his wall from the junction at the left where the blocks rose in steps higher than his waist, to the right, to the corner where it met Kilgas'it's. The other man he's working with.
>> Goad Gatsby:That's not a name.
>> Grace Todd:He showed Senka where to remove the ice and chopped at it energetically himself with the back and blade of his axe so that splinters of ice flew all about and into his face. He worked with drive, but his thoughts were elsewhere. His thoughts and his eyes were feeling their way under the ice to the wall itself, the outer facade of the power station, two blocks thick at the spot he was working on. The wall had previously been laid by some mason who was either incompetent or who had stunk up the job. But now Shukov tackled the wall as if it was his own handiwork. And there's this section where you can. Everything kind of falls away. And what he gets lost in is just the like, very straightforward joy of having a hard earned skill and being able to apply that skill not for anyone else, but just for his own satisfaction, for the sort of inherent satisfaction of doing something.
>> Goad Gatsby:Well, that reminds me, there was a doctor who said that, work cures whatever.
>> Grace Todd:Well, and it's funny cause it does sort of.
>> Goad Gatsby:Look, we were just making fun of this idea. We have to go back and pick apart it. Just because he's happy doing the one thing he likes to do, doesn't mean that it's a great cure for everybody else.
>> Grace Todd:No, absolutely not. And as the novel says, as Shukov says, you can work a horse to death. He is finding internal satisfaction in this. It does not mean that there is anything just or right about it. But in this horrific situation, he is finding sort of satisfaction and self worth where he can. For his own dignity. Right.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:You're like, I don't know.
>> Goad Gatsby:Look, I'm just saying what may work for some doesn't work for all.
>> Grace Todd:Well, sure, of course. I am not expecting everyone to find masonry to be the cure to, the existential toll of living in the.
>> Goad Gatsby:Gulags or physical labor dealing with the problem of, oh, no, I have a fever.
>> Grace Todd:Also, that. That's not the answer. And you can sort of feel it in the prose. Like the whole squad clicks in and they are all working together. They are working in tandem. Buinovsky is like, like working himself half to death, but he is doing everything he can to keep up with the other sort of more hardened men who have been here longer. Fetychukov still sucks ass, and they get rid of him as quickly as possible. But the rest of the men are working really fluidly, really quickly, really cleanly. And they are clearly deriving, like I said, some satisfaction from it. They've all locked in and it's running really smoothly. And they get this kind of fleeting but lovely moment of joy out of it. And then of course, some dipshit shows up.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, no.
>> Grace Todd:To ruin it.
>> Goad Gatsby:Who's this dipshit?
>> Grace Todd:His name is Dude. Der.
>> Goad Gatsby:That's. Wait, that's. That's definitely not a name.
>> Grace Todd:It's D E R, I guess. Maybe it's Dare.
>> Goad Gatsby:Maybe it's short for Anders.
>> Grace Todd:It's just D E R. That's all we get.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right. Ders is the guy from Workaholics.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, okay. And he is probably one of the worst categories of people in the Gulag.
>> Goad Gatsby:Because he is a prisoner and he licks people's leftovers.
>> Grace Todd:No he is a prisoner who. Who has been given a, like, small amount of power.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, he's been given the leftovers too. Lick.
>> Grace Todd:And he's power mad and is constantly trying to rat other people out to the authorities. But he's doing it from a position of power, which means that you can't just slit his throat at night. Or maybe you can. Unclear. And he shows up Randall. Because, he is Randall. This is Randall. We'll just call him Randall, actually. So Randall shows up and starts making threats.
>> Goad Gatsby:Because Dur is the only name I'll be able to remember, though.
>> Grace Todd:That's fair. do you remember earlier when I said that they had to grab the roofing felt to cover the windows?
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, it makes sense to me. Oh, is he like, you're not supposed to do that. You gotta freeze.
>> Grace Todd:He's like, I'm going to report you for wasting good building materials. And he's threatening specifically the squad leader, Turin, who, if you remember is like a, good dude who takes very good care of them. And he's threatening him with extra time on his sentence, which is, yeah, yeah, bad. And in some ways possibly worse than being, like, put in the cells. Right. Although it is kind of spelled out later that being put in these. In these solitary confinement cells can kill you because the conditions are that bad. Having another 10 years added to your already long sentence in the gulag is.
>> Goad Gatsby:I don't know, 10 more years out of 100 doesn't sound that bad.
>> Grace Todd:That's true.
>> Goad Gatsby:If you've already resigned yourself to living, to dying in that gulag, be like, yeah, yeah, m. Maybe my grandkids will get out of here.
>> Grace Todd:So Der shows up and is throwing around threats. And Tyrann decides that he's not going to take it. Actually.
>> Goad Gatsby:Go on.
>> Grace Todd:It says, Tyran leaned up against him and said quite softly, though distinctly enough for everyone to hear, your time for giving terms has passed, you bastard. If you say one word, you bloodsucker, it'll be your last day on earth. Remember that. And the rest of the squad kind of all come and stand behind him. And it says, tyran is, like, shaking with rage. And Pavlo, who's the second in command, who is, quite physically intimidating, is also there. He says Pavlo looked Der straight in the eyes, a look sharp as a razor. And Der says, now, men, take it easy. And he backs down the ramp. And, they've successfully intimidated him.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, yeah, you gotta have your dignity.
>> Grace Todd:And his sort of last salvo is like, but what'll I tell the superintendent and Tyran's like, you'll tell him? It was like that. I don't know, like, off, go away. And it says, der went off across the open ground looking haggard to warm up in his office. Something must have been eating him. But he should have thought a bit before taking on a wolf like Tieran. He should keep pleasant with squad leaders like that. Then he'd have nothing to worry about. The camp authorities didn't insist on his doing any real hard work. He received top level rations. He lived in a separate cabin. What else did he want? Giving himself airs, trying to be smart. So he overplayed his hand he around. And he found out, yeah, yeah.
>> Goad Gatsby:Which can easily happen when, you know, you realize, oh, wow, all of these men with nothing to live for don't like it when I threaten them.
>> Grace Todd:They don't. It's so weird. And then the men click back into work. Poor Buinovsky is, he's sweating away and tottering like a horse, but he's doing his best. He's trying to keep up. And they get into like a rhythm. And Shukov is again, he's kind of slipped back into that, like, really comfortable space where, like, all that matters is what he's doing. And he. It feels satisfying, it feels good. And it's time to start packing up. But they've already m mixed all of this mortar and they want to finish off the mortar that they've mixed in part, I think, because the squad does get. It's not entirely clear if the squad gets punished for wasting building materials, but it really feels and is kind of implied that, like, this is Shukov's. This is something he's doing for his own sense of satisfaction. And it says that, you know, Tyran, the squad leader, is basically like, just throw the rest of the mortar away. Like, just huck it over the wall. And Shukov doesn't want to, so he sends the rest of the squad off and he's like, all of you go. I will finish this. Like, I'll finish it really fast. I don't even have to turn this trowel in because it's my special secret trowel. So you guys go turn the tools in. You go mass by the gates where everyone is getting ready to be counted for the leave. And I'm gonna get this done as fast as I can. And it says, wasn't it enough that Tierin had told him himself not to bother about the mortar, just throw it off the wall and fuck off. But Shukov wasn't made that way. Eight years.
>> Goad Gatsby:He was built differently.
>> Grace Todd:He was built different. Eight years in a camp couldn't change his nature. He worried about anything he could make use of, about every scrap of work he could do. Nothing must be wasted without good reason. Senka, remember, the poor Buchenwald survivor has stayed with him. He won't leave Shukov behind. So they finish the work together, and they just barely make it. Like, they. They get it all done, and they take off at an absolute run. And all of the men have already massed by the gates. And of course, they can't start the count until everyone is there. And so as they're running and you can. I mean, you can almost see it, there's thousands of. Or hundreds. There's hundreds of men who are all masked by these gates. And as these last two are sprinting towards them, they're all yelling at them, like, swearing at them, because they've held everybody up. And it says that Senga, even though he's deaf, mostly deaf, it's loud enough that he can hear them. And he starts swearing back at them. And somebody is like, hey, 104th, your deaf man's a fake. We just tested him. So everyone's very mad at them, but they don't stay mad. Yeah. Ah, they've committed, like, a minor sin, but not a serious one.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. They're mad in the moment. They made them wait out in the cold.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. But a, more serious sin has been committed because they do the count and someone is missing.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh.
>> Grace Todd:Which is not good, because no one leaves until you find everybody.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. Turns out they got bigger things to worry about. Who is it? Who is it?
>> Grace Todd:Thank God it's not anyone in the 104th, which they were worried about.
>> Goad Gatsby:Maria Abramovich Yakov Smirnoff.
>> Grace Todd:And so finally they figure out which squad it's from. It's from the 32nd. And the two guys from the 32nd go off to see if they can find the missing guy. And the 104th are standing around, they're kind of gossiping with each other. Cesar shows up from his cushy office job. And I bring this up because, for the second time, Cesar shows up. And he and Buinovsky, the naval, captain, are close. They're friends. They're interested in the same kind of books. And Cesar says, you know, essentially, like, how was your day? And. And says. He says, well, Captain, how'd it go? He asked. And the next line is, a man who's warm can't understand a man who's freezing. What a damn fool question. And the captain is like, if you really want to know, I worked so hard that I can barely stand up, actually. But we find the missing guy. The Moldavian.
>> Goad Gatsby:Moldavia.
>> Grace Todd:The Moldavian.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, you know, I'm racist towards Moldavians. I don't know.
>> Grace Todd:And the Moldavian has the distinction of being one of the only real spies in the camp. Or at least they all think so.
>> Goad Gatsby:Okay, so they're all accused of crimes and he actually did one.
>> Grace Todd:That's what they think. It says you could find up to five spies in each squad, but they were fakes, prison made spies. They passed as spies in their dossiers, but really they were simply ex prisoners of war. Shukov himself was one of these spies, but the Moldavian was genuine. And so not only is he an outsider, but they find out that he was up in the rafters doing plastering, got warm and fell asleep.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, that happens to me sometimes too.
>> Grace Todd:And now everyone is pissed because all of this has delayed them getting to leave.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, they just want to go home and go to bed. That's their fourth favorite time of day.
>> Grace Todd:and they're losing the very narrow window of free time that they have.
>> Goad Gatsby:Oh, yeah.
>> Grace Todd:The longer that they wait for this count to be done so that they can be marched back across the step is less time that they have when they get back to the camp to do whatever it is they want or need to do.
>> Goad Gatsby:Fair enough. Yeah. Freaking Moldavian.
>> Grace Todd:The Moldavian. So they get him back. They get the Moldavian. And one thing that is interesting is everyone, Everyone hates this man, at least temporarily. And his own squad start beating the shit out of him. But they're beating the shit out of him in a way that is subtly moving him farther away from the guards.
>> Goad Gatsby:Go. What?
>> Grace Todd:They are punishing him themselves so that the guards essentially don't have a chance to punish him.
>> Goad Gatsby:You mean like killing him?
>> Grace Todd:No, they're beating. I mean, they're. They're hitting him.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, but like further away, like pushing him to the side and beating him.
>> Grace Todd:They're manu. Yeah, they're maneuvering him away from the guards. And the implication is that whatever the guards would do would be much like, yes, he is being punished. Yes, everyone is furious at him, but even so, the sort of loyalty among prisoners, they are. They are dealing with him themselves so that he is not dealt with by the guards.
>> Goad Gatsby:Okay, so that sounds like they're doing him a favor in a way.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Goad Gatsby:Kicking his teeth in for, you know, for solidarity.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, yeah. And finally, the count is correct. The Moldavian has been dealt with, and they are marched back across the steppe. And that is where we're going to end for this episode.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right, and join us next week for the second day of a Life.
>> Grace Todd:So, what do you think so far? What are your thoughts? Questions?
>> Goad Gatsby:like I said, I'm still holding out for that happy ending. Uh-huh.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. You get a lot of those in Russian literature.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. Although. All right, so if there's still more pages in this book and they're going home, and this is just about one day of his life, seems like there is gonna be, I don't know, maybe an ambush. Are they gonna be marauders in, the second part of the book?
>> Grace Todd:You know what? Maybe pirates. Taiga pirates.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right. Land pirates.
>> Grace Todd:what do you think so far? are you enjoying Ivan Denisovich?
>> Goad Gatsby:Well, I gotta say, does not. Does, not, excite me the same way as, high fantasy does?
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, that's fair. Markedly fewer tits and dragons.
>> Goad Gatsby:look, I'm actually. No, I don't even like the dragons either. I like the swords.
>> Grace Todd:That's fair.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. I just want the swords. There's no swords in this book.
>> Grace Todd:That's very Freudian.
>> Goad Gatsby:No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not like that. I just like swords.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, fair enough. So, that. That gets us through the first two thirds of a day in the life of Ivan Denisovich.
>> Goad Gatsby:All right?
>> Grace Todd:And when we come back next time, we will wrap up this thrilling narrative, and we will talk about Solzhenitsyn and the American right wing and dissident Russian literature and,
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, all right. And maybe. Maybe the next time, you hear me again, another J6ER will have been killed by the police.
>> Grace Todd:Maybe they simply can't help themselves.
>> Goad Gatsby:They were in prison for their own protection.
>> Grace Todd:They're all. It's just Fetyukovs all the way down. Well, goad.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Thank you so much for being here.
>> Goad Gatsby:Thank you for having me here. I would have otherwise been lost, wandering the streets, not knowing what to do with my day.
>> Grace Todd:where would you like people to find you if they can't get enough goad content?
>> Goad Gatsby:Well, you see, I have the goad. Gatsby. Twitter. There's no the goad, Gatsby on Twitter.
>> Grace Todd:Goad.
>> Goad Gatsby:Bluesky. Social. And, also, I have a newsletter. Go Ghost IO look, people were using the substack, and now Bari Weiss is like, ooh, I want a cut of everything. So I don't use the substack.
>> Grace Todd:And that's fair. I have to admit that. Didn't read it. The podcast does have a substack, but I understand why you don't have one. And it's bad.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah, I mean, I still have, like, I have the account. I don't want someone to take goad substack and then, like. And then just, like, publish things. Like, actually, the government is good.
>> Grace Todd:It's probably a matter of serious concern for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Goad Gatsby:I mean, that's what I would do if I found out, like, a big right wing name like left Twitter. I would take their handle.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Goad Gatsby:And start posting the opposite.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. Pull an onion with, infowars. M. Except that it didn't pan out in the end. Well, look, it still might, though.
>> Goad Gatsby:It still might.
>> Grace Todd:Fingers crossed.
>> Goad Gatsby:Fingers crossed here.
>> Grace Todd:All right, well, thanks again for being here and thank all of you for being here with us. I very much appreciate it. And, as per usual, just a quick little plea. If you have a friend, loved one frenemy that you think might enjoy the show, consider, telling them about it.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yes. In order to get somebody, we want this podcast to be like a cult.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Goad Gatsby:And in order for the cult to work, you need to recruit other people.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Goad Gatsby:And also, if you see somebody listening to another podcast, you need to tell them to stop listening to that podcast and instead listen to this podcast, or you will no longer be their friend.
>> Grace Todd:I mean, the American right wing already thinks that literacy and basic reading comprehension is a cult. So let's just lean into it.
>> Goad Gatsby:Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, what I like best about this podcast is that it makes me feel better for not reading a book.
>> Grace Todd:All right, well, that wraps us up for today. We'll be back next week with more good USSR content. And in the meantime, if you can this week, this month, this pay period, consider supporting a living author, because they could really use the love. Bye. Didn'T read. It was created, written, researched and recorded by me, M. Grace Todd. Matty Wood is our co producer and social media maven. Editing by Tally, a true podcasting professional. And Grace Todd. Our theme song is books 2.0. Written, performed and recorded by William Albritton. Our logo was designed and illustrated by the incredibly talented Jess versus Special thanks to blackiris. So Social club in Richmond, Virginia, Reach out to us with questions, concerns, or academic scrutiny at, didn't readititpodmail.mhm.com.