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The SHIZO was the ultimate punishment of the penal system. But the Gulag could also provide its inmates with rewards too: carrots as well as sticks. For along with a prisoner’s food, his ability to sleep, and his place of work, the camp also controlled his access to the outside world. Year in and year out, Gulag administrators in Moscow would send out instructions, dictating how many letters, packages, and money transfers prisoners could receive, as well as when and how relatives could visit them from the outside.

Like the instructions on punishment cells, rules governing outside contacts also fluctuated over time. Or perhaps it is more precise to say that, generally speaking, outside contacts grew more limited over time. The instructions outlining the prison regime of 1930, for example, state simply that prisoners are allowed to write and receive an unlimited number of letters and packages. Meetings with relatives are also allowed, with no particular restrictions, although the number of them—not stated in the instructions—would depend upon the good behavior of prisoners.¹⁷

By 1939, however, the instructions were far more detailed. They stated specifically that only those prisoners who fulfilled the production norm were allowed to meet with their relatives, and then only once every six months. Those who overfulfilled the norm were allowed one meeting per month. Packages also became more limited: prisoners were allowed only one per month, and prisoners convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes could receive a package only once every three months.¹⁸

Indeed, by 1939, a whole raft of rules governing the sending and receiving of letters had also sprung into existence. Some political prisoners could receive letters once a month, others only once every three months. Camp censors also explicitly forbade prisoners to write about certain subjects: they could not mention the number of prisoners in their camp, discuss details of the camp regime, name the camp guards, or say what sort of work the camp carried out. Letters which included such details were not only confiscated by camp censors but also carefully noted in the prisoner’s file—presumably because they were evidence of “spying.”¹⁹

All of these regulations were continually changed, amended, and adapted to circumstances. During the war years, for example, all limitations on the number of food parcels were lifted: camp authorities seem to have hoped, simply, that relatives would help feed the prisoners, a task the NKVD found extremely difficult at that time. After the war, on the other hand, prisoners in special disciplinary camps for violent criminals, as well as those in the special camps for political prisoners, saw their rights to contact with the outside world shrink once again. They were allowed to write only four times a year, and could receive letters only from close family members, meaning parents, sibling, spouses, and children.²⁰

Precisely because the regulations were so varied and complicated, and because they changed with great frequency, contacts with the outside world were in reality left—once again—to the whim of the camp commanders. Letters and packages certainly never reached prisoners in punishment cells, punishment barracks, or punishment lagpunkts. Nor did they reach prisoners whom the camp authorities disliked, for whatever reason. Moreover, there were camps which were simply too isolated, and therefore did not receive any mail.²¹ There were camps so disorganized that they did not bother to distribute mail. Of one camp, a disgusted NKVD inspector wrote that “packages, letters, and money orders are not distributed to prisoners, but rather lie by the thousands in warehouses and outposts.”²² In many camps, letters were received months late, if at all. Many prisoners realized only years later how many of their letters and packages had gone missing. Whether stolen or lost, no one could say. Conversely, prisoners who had been strictly forbidden from receiving letters sometimes received them anyway, despite the best efforts of the camp administration.²³

On the other hand, some camp censors not only did their duty and distributed letters, they even allowed some missives to pass unopened as well. Dmitri Bystroletov remembered one—a “young komsomolka,” a member of the young communist league—who gave prisoners their letters unopened and uncensored: “She risked not just a piece of bread, but freedom: for that, they would give her a ten-year sentence.”²⁴