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Precisely because the question of where one slept was so crucial, sleeping conditions were always an extremely important tool of prisoner control, and the camp administration consciously used them as such. In their central archives in Moscow, the Gulag’s archivists carefully preserved photographs of different types of barracks, intended for different types of prisoners. The barracks of the otlichniki—the “excellent ones” or “shock-workers”—have single beds with mattresses and blankets, wooden floors, and pictures on the walls. The prisoners are, if not exactly smiling for the photographers, then at least reading newspapers and looking well-fed. The rezhim barracks, on the other hand—the punishment barracks for poor or unruly workers— have wooden planks on crude wooden pegs instead of beds. Even in these photographs, taken for propaganda purposes, the rezhim prisoners have no mattresses, and are shown sharing blankets.⁷⁹

In some camps, the etiquette surrounding sleeping arrangements became quite elaborate. Space was at such a premium that the possession of space, and of privacy, were considered great privileges, accorded only to those who ranked among the camp’s aristocracy. Higher-ranking prisoners—brigade leaders, norm-setters, and others—were often permitted to sleep in smaller barracks, with fewer people. Solzhenitsyn, initially assigned the job of “works manager” upon his arrival at a camp in Moscow, was given a place in a barracks where instead of multiple bunks there were ordinary cots and one bed table for every two persons, not for a whole brigade. During the day the door was locked and you could leave your things there. Last, there was a half-legal electric hot plate, and it was not necessary to go and crowd around the big common stove in the yard.⁸⁰

This was all considered high luxury. Certain, more desirable jobs—that of a carpenter, or a tool repairman—also came with the much sought-after right to sleep in the workshop. Anna Rozina slept in the cobbler’s workshop when she worked as a cobbler in the Temnikovsky camp, and had the “right” to go to the baths more often as well, all of which counted as great privileges. ⁸¹

In almost every camp, doctors, even prisoner doctors, were also allowed to sleep separately, a privilege which reflected their special status. Isaac Vogelfanger, a surgeon, felt himself privileged because he was allowed to sleep in a bunk bed in a “small room adjacent to the reception area” of his camp’s infirmary: “the moon seemed to be smiling upon me as I went to sleep.” Along with him slept the camp’s feldsher, or “medical assistant,” who had the same privilege. ⁸²

Sometimes, special living conditions were arranged for invalids. The actress Tatyana Okunevsksaya managed to get sent to an invalid’s camp in Lithuania, where “the barracks were long, with many windows, light, clean, and no upper bunks above your head.”⁸³ The prisoners sent to work on Beria’s sharashki—the “special bureaus” for talented engineers and technicians—received the best sleeping quarters of all. In Bolshevo, a sharashka just outside of Moscow, barracks were “large, light, clean and heated by dutch ovens” rather than metal stoves. The beds had linen and pillows, the light was turned off at night, and there was a private shower.⁸⁴ Prisoners who lived in these special quarters knew, of course, that they could easily be taken away, which enhanced their interest in working hard.

Informally, there was often another hierarchy at work within barracks as well. In most barracks, the critical decisions about who slept where were taken by those groups in the camps that were the strongest and most united. Until the late 1940s, when the big national groups—the Ukrainians, Balts, Chechens, Poles—grew stronger, the best-organized prisoners were usually the convicted criminals, as we shall see. As a rule, they therefore slept in the top bunks, where there was better air and more space, clubbing and kicking those who objected. Those who slept on the lower bunks had less clout. Those who slept on the floor—the lowest-ranking prisoners in the camp— suffered most, remembered one prisoner: