Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells of a woman at the theater, lost in a cinematic world, only to find herself thrust back to reality via the Gulag. What was her crime, you ask? Simply existing in a Stalinist regime dominated by the quotas necessary to stay in power through a state of constant fear. The element of constant fear can cause one to self-censor to prevent possible repercussion. Edward Snowden once said that “Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively are less free.” The concept applies decades earlier in Soviet Russia. The act of committing a crime was less crucial to the State than the potential to commit a crime because in presuming the inherent guilt in everyone, the State assumes free rein to prosecute at whim with no concrete evidence required.
The lack of evidence would lead soon-to-be prisoners to exclaim as Solzhenitsyn says, “Me? For what?”, the illogicality and sudden nature of the situation taking hold. If it suited the State, evidence may be presented but in Solzhenitsyn’s case, it was private correspondence that proved fatal. Daring to criticize Stalin in a letter outed Solzhenitsyn as an enemy of the State, at least in the eyes of a totalitarian regime that required nothing less than complete allegiance. And with the “arrest to check a box” mentality present in the Russian secret police forces of the time, even had Solzhenitsyn denied his criticisms, he would have likely still been sent to Gulag. With a chance to add another number to the ever-growing arrest tally, the question of presumed guilt likely would have entered the equation if needed.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Soviet quota system was that guilt or innocence was completely in the hands of the regime and the arresting officers. Giving an extreme example of a social caste system, origins were used to negatively impact and sentence them to forced labor or death – “Any individual suspected of the wrong social origins was a potential victim.” (Courtois, 188) Not only were individuals forced to consider any potential crimes throughout their lives or how the slightest conscious action could make them a target, allowing for social origins to be a determining factor in arrest made an individual culpable by association. Seeing as an individual cannot choose the situation into which they are born, there was no escaping the figurative target on your back. If the NKVD saw someone as a potential threat, the threat was neutralized.