Here’s the sort of people they were. A letter from her fifteen-year-old daughter came to Yelizaveta Tsvetkova in the Kazan Prison for long-term prisoners: “Mama! Tell me, write to me — are you guilty or not? I hope you weren’t guilty, because then I won’t join the Komsomol, and I won’t forgive them because of you. But if you are guilty—I won’t write you any more and will hate you.” And the mother was stricken by remorse in her damp gravelike cell with its dim little lamp: How could her daughter live without the Komsomol? How could she be permitted to hate Soviet power? Better that she should hate me. And she wrote: “I am guilty. . . . Enter the Komsomol!”
A.I.Soltzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago
People who are ideologically possessed can do things that they know are wrong. They will even sacrifice, with glee, their own family or even themselves. They will think nothing of sacrificing you. To them, their acts are heroic.
For context I am wondering - is it that the mom was not guilty but lied and said she was guilty to protect image of soviet government and help convince her daughter to join?
Perhaps Soltzhenitsyn and the daughter was misled and they intercepted/re-scribed her letter. Or the mom was defeated and thought to herself if you can't beat them, join them as a matter of survivorship. Or a situation where she predicted they would read her correspondence and didn't want to put anyone in further danger.
From what I understand, just getting this book to see the light of day was extremely difficult. Imagine how much easier it would be to take over the exchange of correspondence of jailed inmates.
I should read the book.
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