Food During The Gulag Essay

There were many things that the prisoners of the Gulag endured while serving their sentences. One of those things that had a particularly strong influence on their actions was the food available to them. The role that food plays on the prisoners and officers in the Gulag played a very crucial part in their lives. Food during the Gulag helped the inhabitants stay alive, controlled the prisoners, and formed a bribing system among the occupants.
　　Food is an incredibly critical part of any living being’s life and for most people, it is a very enjoyable part. However, though the prisoners of the Gulag were lucky enough to eat a meal, they were only offered it two times a day and were fed food in low quality. The prisoners were offered kasha, a vegetable stew with its content “depend[ing] on the kind of vegetable it provided” that season (Solzhenitsyn, p. 10); magara, a

tasteless Chinese oatmeal which turned solid when it went cold; and a single piece of bread. In spite of the fact that the food was in bad quality, the prisoners of the Gulag would find a way to steal extra rations for themselves in order to keep themselves full and to give themselves enough energy for the work the were required to do every day (though it was not enough; it kept them alive and working, but not healthy).
　　Another thing that made food important role in their lives was that because they were offered so little of it and in small rations, it still would not satisfy them, leaving them hungry.

That hunger eventually controlled the prisoners to commit actions against the prison laws. As mentioned above, prisoners of the Gulag would find a way to get extra rations for themselves by either sneaking it out of the cooks hand while he was serving, by doing duties for the chef, or even by swipe it out from the attention of other prisoner’s. The main character, Ivan Denisovich, even went as far as to sew hidden pockets into his jacket and create a hole in his mattress to hide a portion of his bread when he was not able to complete his breakfast. At one point during the Gulag, the officers in the prison “were so scared of the quarter pound hunks” (Solzhenitsyn, p. 16) that they required every prisoner keep their ration of bread in a wooden box. This, in turn, added additional worry and stress to the prisoners as they believed someone else would take their ration, which led to fights and quarrels among the

prisoners.
　　Finally, food during the Gulag formed a bribing system among the occupants. There was one prisoner named Tsezar who received “two food parcels a month” (Solzhenitsyn, p. 24) from the outside world containing various goods and was so well fed from it that it did not look like he was an inmate. This prompted other inmates to ask for special favors and for officers to be more lenient with him in exchange for something in one of Tsezar’s parcels.
　　Helping the inhabitants stay alive, controlling the prisoners, and it’s part in forming a bribing system among the occupants was one of the many roles that food played during the Gulag. Not only that, but due to its scarcity, it played both the prisoners and officers like a fiddle and controlled their lives so much it was surprising to learn what lengths each person had to undergo in order to keep themselves satisfied.