Siberia is a vague vast sweep of nothingness, a harsh desolate terrain, surrounded by somber depths of mountains. In this remote distant land, far from the haunts of man, at the end of the world, the Gulag had its beginnings. The system of Soviet labor camps and prisons saw close to 50 million people walk through its gates. Once sentenced and shipped to Siberia, prisoners were filled with the belief that they would never again return to civilization. This was the disembarkation point from life.
No outsiders visited the prison camps of the former Soviet Union. Little information about the millions who lived, suffered, and died there is known. Millions will remain nameless for all time. When one entered the Gulag, they were subjected to treatment that was inhumane. Conditions were incomprehensible. Horrors committed were unspeakable. No one can fathom the atrocities that were seen and felt and experienced. Such acts were carried out by guards who saw prisoners as waste, complete human waste. They looked at their lives through a self-absorbed lens, a calculated and menacing impertinence. Most were filled with contempt, anger and hate, finding great joy in the immense sufferings, the tortures of their fellow man. Out of this environment of complete chaos and mayhem, came one of the greatest voices and most brilliant intellects of the twentieth century ... Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Life in the Gulag was a fierce inner battle with one's own mind and heart for survival. Avoiding death was the daily ritual. Within months of confinement, the desire to live faded, just as your hopes and dreams did upon arrival. Prisoners in the Gulag would pray. They said their prayers inwardly, praying to a God whom they found difficult to believe in. They did so out of obligation to a hopeless hope, a sense of maybe, frantic for their pleadings to be heard, hoping God was listening. They were not prayers born from a vigorous, strong, uncompromising, I-can-defy-all-odds type of faith. No, they were born from desperation, for in their surroundings there was no evidence of God. The only evidence seen was that of hell, a pure living hell.
Like other prisoners, Solzhenitsyn lived and worked in very bleak conditions. One day, the depression, the desolation became too much to bear. Surrounded by death, enveloped in evil that was so blunt and so terse, the hopelessness overwhelmed him. His endless days of working in fields of backbreaking labor and slow starvation, of never ending mental, physical, and verbal abuse had stolen any desire to live. He felt no purpose in pressing on; his life would make no relevant difference. A despair completely enervating had overcome him. Laying his shovel down, he walked slowly and despondently to a makeshift bench. A devouring void of emptiness encompassed him. A drowsiness and hopelessness steeled on his eyelids. His eyes were bleeding with mortality. His lips were pale. He knew at any moment it would be over. Some demented guard would approach, order him up, and when he failed to respond, he would be bludgeoned to death. As he sat, head hanging down, waiting for the end, he felt a presence. Next to him knelt a fellow prisoner, an old man with wrinkled skin, withered hands, a tortured face that revealed the years in the Gulag. Bent over, the man found a stick and drew two lines in the sand, two simple lines. They formed the sign of the cross.
As Solzhenitsyn stared at the simple outline, something happened. His entire perspective of life changed. He knew he was merely one man. He knew he was weak, frail, and broken. He knew he was surrounded by evil of epidemic proportions. Yet in that moment, he also knew that the hope of all mankind was represented by the lines in the sand - and through its power, anything was possible. The cross birthed hope. Not in his environment. Not in his circumstance. Not in his surroundings. The rags he wore would remain. The implausible conditions would not fade. Unconscionable crimes and torture would not desist. But in that moment, the battle for his life was won. Those humble, crossing, solitary lines propelled him to stand back up, pick up his shovel, and go back to work - not knowing that his writings would one day impact the entire world.
Through the selfless and compassionate act of the old man, Solzhenitsyn saw something bigger than his life, bigger than the guards, bigger than the powerful empire they represented. He saw beyond the shackles and the chains, beyond hate, cruelty and death. He saw the cross. And that cross saved him. Without it, he would have been beaten to death and thrown in an unmarked grave. Left alone. Forgotten.
Solzhenitsyn survived the Gulag. He would go on to become a Nobel laureate. Never could he fathom or imagine a future so bright while incarcerated in the darkness of the Soviet prison camps. May his story give you strength to stand against hopeless odds, defying them, overcoming and surviving. That same power that lifted him can lift you. Today. Right now. Let his story teach you one more thing ... those most conscious of another world have the greatest impact on this one.
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