Why Are Some Peoople Able to Survive Longer Than Others?

The aim of this work is to answer the question, “Can we generalize why certain people were able to survive more than others”? To survive the Gulag, many prisoners had to fight with others for food, shelter, and simple medical care. Certain prisoners went into religious and intellectual medications to preserve at least the appearance of intelligence. The survival required willpower, strength of mind, skills, mercilessness, and a lot of luck.

Every former Gulag prisoner explained his/her survival as a result of many insignificant strategies. A variety of memoirists claimed that the only reason why they have survived was due to their spiritual life. To distract themselves for the physical sufferings, many prisoners created mental exercises: religious rituals, music, art, cards, chess, and literature. Prisoners used to write and read poetry to each other, told stories, discussed philosophy and history. Under such harsh conditions, the prisoners were required to have an extraordinary imagination. To play cards or paint, they had to use anything that was easy to hide from the regular raids in the barracks. The tree core was used as a canvas and any blood was used as paint.

The Soviet Union has created a system that forced prisoners to constantly fight with each other. Being imprisoned led up to despair. Many were driven to commit acts, which they would never do when being held in normal conditions. Some used to injure their hands, hoping to get rid of the hard work. The intelligentsia-small intellectual part of the population of the camps emphasized the significant role of literature, especially poetry.

Nina Hagen-Thorn described situations when she read poems to her cellmates and they listened, as if they were the parched earth ...

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...me and asked to write a portrait of his wife and the two sons. He brought the picture of a very young woman and the boys, who were about twelve and fourteen years old. Both he and his wife were satisfied with the portrait. He had a business trip to Moscow, where he found my parents and acknowledged them about my existence in the camp”. Alla Andreeva was released on 13th of August, 1956. After just a while, her husband, Daniil Andreev was freed, as well.

Nina Hagen-Thorn was born in Saint Petersburg in 1901. Her father was Swedish and her mother was Russian. Before her arrest, she has worked as a researcher in one of the leading Soviet research institutions. She was an ethnographer and was considered as a candidate of historical sciences. Nina Hagen-Thorn spent five years from 1937-1942 in the Kolyma camp. In 1947, she was rearrested and sent to the Temnikov Camp.