Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead is not a novel, although its main character, its narrator, the upper-class Goryanchikov, is probably the author, himself, in disguise. We don’t know if the other inmates in the prison camp where the book is set are faithful descriptions of real people, but they certainly give the impression of being. If there is one thing that lasts after reading this book, it is the immediacy of its realism.
Dostoevsky spent years in that field, in Siberia, of course, after surviving his own execution through a last-minute pardon that came apparently when his executioners were ready to take aim. It was a bit hissy and Russian royalty and their system used it quite often. Perhaps they were always late in signing such orders, as they were probably concerned about counting the earnings of their servants, or should I say the earnings of the servants. After all, you have to be careful to look out for the well-being of your subjects, because if these people were really starving, one would take a cut and one might have to run the fountains at Peterhof for half an hour or less. each month. I am exaggerating, perhaps but one feels that Dostoevsky did not.
And it is the detail of the descriptions offered by its author that gives life to this living death. When he describes how even one misplaced word or look can result in a prisoner receiving literally hundreds of lashes, one begins to understand the nature of God-derived absolute power.
Perhaps it is the descriptions of these beatings that linger the longest in the reader’s memory at the end of this book. Dostoyevsky, through Goryanchikov, of course, describes the state of the meat on the backs of people who had just returned from their ordeals. It even allows those responsible for applying these disciplinary measures to describe the details of their technique. We learn, for example, that the ultimate weapon for the corporal punishment artist is birch. It was the particular flexibility of this wood that allowed the true expression of the beater’s personality, as its ability to store energy meant that a few dozen birch lashes could be as destructive as a hundred with a cane. The reader should take note of the advice. It can be helpful.
One of the most fascinating memories in the book is how often such punishments seem to happen. After all, the deterrent effect is their most important function, so to be effective at this, they must be used as often as possible. It will make them think twice, then three and so on …
But in the end, as the composer Laos Janacek concluded, it is the humanity of the people involved that shines through. Some of these people committed the most horrible crimes and most enjoyed telling their stories. And there was always, it seems, an internal logic in their stories that arises to justify action, no matter how disastrous the effects may have been, no matter how dire the consequences. It was not that they were proud of what they had done, but that their reality had become part of them, part of their present and future, as well as their past.
In general, one marvels at how these inmates from the prison camp just get on with their lives. They eat your food, whatever it is, engage in illicit trade, run their own drinking establishments, and probably engage in conjugal acts of any character you can think of. And they cooperate when they are not beaten. The next century had A Day in the Life of Solzhenitsyn’s Ivan Denisovich and, frankly, little seems to have changed, other than the eventual ownership of the facility.
