9:14am September 18, 2014

“

If you want to continue being the same person you once were, if you want to maintain your religious, political, and national convictions, if you hope to remain a human and decent person who cares about his cell mate, if you intend to know what is happening around you, or if you try to attempt to contact another cell, you will be punished for it. You will receive less food, less clothing, less fresh air, fewer letters. Like a laboratory rat’s, your reflexes will be conditioned: a step in one direction means less food; a step in the other means more. Your stomach becomes your guide. As Comrade Marx declared, “Material life precedes spiritual life.” There is an elaborate system of power in the prison: guards, sergeants, the block commander, duty officers, deputy heads, prison head, and, above them all, officials from the “corrective labor” institutions. ….

…It may be primitive, but it works. It affects some zeks after a month, others after a year, and still others after five years. It works, butnot on everyone, and you have to see the desperate persistence with which the KGB fights year after year for each “unsaved” soul.

But why? Why is it so important for the KGB to destroy each individual? Why is it that even if he has spent years in prison and represents no danger to it, the KGB still wants him to confess? There are several reasons. Every prisoner who recants is a potential influence on other zeks to do likewise. And each one who breaks undermines support in the West for human rights. But beyond these self-evident reasons, there is something larger at work here, some kind of psychological imperative, as though the KGB is so lacking in confidence that it has to prove itself again and again, as though even a single holdout undermines everything it stands for and makes a mockery of its intentions.

”

Sharansky, Natan (1998-11-27). Fear No Evil (p. 235). PublicAffairs. Kindle Edition. 

(This book is basically concentrated essence of little packages. Highly recommended.)

22 notes