“Doctor Kuzmenko poured the chess set onto the table. “What a beauty,” I said, arranging the pieces on the plywood board. It was a chess set of the finest, j...

“Stalin’s death did not bring any new hope into the hardened hearts of the prisoners, nor did it spur the exhausted engines, tired of pushing clotted blood t...

“The OSO is a special meeting under the minister, the People's Commissar of the OGPU, whose signature millions of people were sent without trial to find thei...

“The man was old, long-armed, strong. In his youth, he experienced mental trauma, was sentenced as a pest for ten years and was brought to the Northern Urals...

“Shmelev’s brigade shoveled human slag - human waste from the gold mine. From the open-pit mine where sand is mined and peat is removed, there were three pat...

“We played cards at Naumov’s horse-driver’s. The guards on duty never looked into the barracks of the horsemen, rightly believing that their main service was...

“From hunger, our envy was dull and powerless, like each of our feelings. We did not have the strength to feel, to look for an easier job, to go around, ask,...

“The letter lay on the black, smoky table like a piece of ice. The doors of the iron barrel stove were open, the coal glowed like lingonberry jam in a can, a...

“Small zone” is forwarding. “Big Zone” - a mining administration camp - endless squat barracks, prison streets, a triple fence of barbed wire, winter-style g...

“Even in that fertile time, when Merzlyakov worked as a groom and in a homemade cereal jar - a large tin can with a pierced bottom like a sieve - it was poss...

“How do they trample the road through virgin snow? A man walks ahead, sweating and cursing, barely moving his feet, continually getting stuck in the loose, d...

“Dinner is over. Glebov leisurely licked the bowl, carefully scraped the bread crumbs from the table into his left palm and, bringing it to his mouth, carefu...