Sarah Paine

So these are places that I'm not related to and just curious.

I don't know the answer, but I know I've just recently read the Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

I should have read it years ago when it came out, but I didn't, so I finally read it.

If you read that, look at the level of cruelty.

It's mind-blowing.

It isn't simply that the prisoners are mean to each other or that the prison guards are mean to the prisoners or the guards are mean to each other.

All that's true.

And it's not simply that the civilians outside of the gulag are mean to everybody.

It's family members who are mean to people who are in the gulag.

The neighbors are mean to the family members who have anyone who's in the gulag.

And you start looking and going, who's not being mean in this place?

They're all being mean.

And then you look at, oh, then I haven't got the list of all the words, but then I was reading a lot of Russian stuff last winter and then maintaining a list of words in Russian.

Sila, it means strength or coercion in Russia.

In English, strength doesn't mean coercion.

It just means having power, right?

But in Russian, it also means coercion.

Or detente, it comes from the French, which means a relaxation of pressure.

The Russian word, what it means is unloading a gun.

So if you look at their language, it's so coercive.