The Gulag Archipelago/Awesome

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • One prisoner managed to utterly foil an attempt to drive him insane with prolonged sleeplessness. Not only did he manage to figure out how to fall asleep standing up, he also managed to do so while keeping his eyes open. In doing so, he fooled them for over a month, and by the time they caught on, even the interrogators found themselves impressed.
  • The trial of Vasily Grigoryevich Vlasov was one for him. While still a Doomed Moral Victor, he managed to embarrass the prosecutor so badly by telling the court he had been responsible for orders that had been used to implicate Vlasov himself in a crime, he even finished the trial with this blistering The Reason You Suck Speech:

"I consider you not a court but actors pretending to be a court in a stage farce where roles have already been written for you. You are engaged in a repulsive provocation on the part of the NKVD. You are going to sentence me to be shot no matter what I say. I believe one thing only: the time will come when you will be here in my place."


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