THE ORIGINAL SIN OF THE INTELLECT
47
the windows were barred.-I did not leave Butyrki Prison until half
a year later.
At the beginning I shared cell number 184 with a Pole, a
Spaniard and a Hungarian. By day I sat and at night I lay on
my bed, unless I was in solitary confinement or being interrogated,
there or in the Lubyanka. Once a day we were permitted to go
to one of the prison courts to "walk" in a circle for twenty minutes.
So I had a great deal of time to think, especially since the bright
electric light burned through the night and permitted no deep
sleep.
Still, our accommodations and treatment were incomparably
better than those of the Soviet prisoners held for investigation, who
were kept in the same building on the first floor and in the cellar.
We even received five books regularly every ten days. There I first
read the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. I read that material
existence determines consciousness.
It
seemed that under the given
conditions I was the living refutation of this thesis, yet at the same
time I found it confirmed little by little in another respect.
The Marxist-Leninist theory affected me while I became more
and more a victim of malnutrition. When I entered the prison I
weighed 190 pounds, when I was discharged, 119 pounds. The
question asked by all the prisoners, "Why do you let us starve?"
was answered with a lie by countless Soviet officers and Antifa
functionaries. Years later a high Soviet officer confessed to me, "We
are starving people into Communism. Not only because we are
building more and more canning factories and hoarding food for
use in case of war. No, only hungry people work as hard as our
gigantic efforts require. Only someone who suffers is prepared to
work like a slave for something better, and, if necessary, to die."
Hunger
is
part of the system; I have seen a thousand times how
prisoners worked to the point of exhaustion to earn an additional
seven ounces of bread of the worst quality. Only people who never
get quite enough to eat allow themselves to be ruled with the whip;
at the same time they believe the doctrine promising them salvation,
and are prepared to fight for it. It
is
the simple old formula of
the carrot and the stick, except that rotten carrots suffice for the
Soviets. Well-fed humans are dangerous to the Soviet system.
Disagreeing, one might point to the so-called sponsorship of the
