Harmonizing History: Codified Evil

Note: This is Part V of a series in which I’m curating a soundtrack to accompany my reading of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago.” For background information about the project, please read Part I. Here you can find Part II, Part III, Part IV. You can also access an Apple Music playlist of the soundtrack here (music will be added as installments are released).

While eye-opening, The Gulag Archipelago is challenging to digest at times. Solzhenitsyn recounted story after story of oppression under the Soviet regime, which was difficult enough to stomach. But he also went to great lengths to expose the Soviet legal system, from its early days after the October Revolution to the time of his writing.

Parsing the details of specific court cases grew tiresome. However, it’s vital to remember Solzhenitsyn’s motivation. The Gulag Archipelago is no entertaining novel or memoir. It’s a meticulous historical account meant to imprint the realities of the Soviet era on humanity’s memory. The legal minutiae was a small price for bearing witness to the history.

Wisely, Solzhenitsyn issued periodic reminders of his aims. Whenever my interest waned, he called me back. He warned against forces that whitewash the past, saying:

 “We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history, but merely that hackneyed dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering.” 

Out of Chaos, Codified Evil

In the early post-revolution years, Soviet law was in disarray. With the rejection of the Tsarist legal codes, a vacuum emerged. The old system was thrown out, but a new one had yet to replace it. Judges and lawyers trained in the Tsarist codes were purged and replaced by revolutionary appointees with little formal legal education. 

Without a formal criminal code, law enforcement resorted to ad hoc directives. Makeshift “courts” handed down arbitrary sentences based on revolutionary zeal rather than statutes. 

But this would change. The word “maturation” would be a misnomer. Instead, the emerging legal apparatus metastasized and was codified into a repressive instrument of control. 

Sacrificed on the Altar of Collectivism

One of the most poignant stories was that of engineer Oldenborger. He devoted three decades to Moscow’s water supply system and became its chief engineer in the early 1900s. 

A confirmed bachelor married only to his work, Oldenborger refused to join his colleagues’ strike, stating: “On the operational side, please forgive me, I am not on strike…In everything else, I-well, yes, I am on strike.” He was unwilling to harm his fellow Russians by disrupting the water supply. 

But such individualism was not to be tolerated. From then on, the new regime hounded Oldenborger relentlessly as an enemy of the people. He faced endless interrogations and investigations. He was constantly bombarded with “urgent” assignments while the infrastructure he had devoted his career to preserving was deteriorating. 

The machine was determined to break his solitary spirit. It pressed him on all sides. As the water system decayed, Oldenborger sank into despair. In a final act of resistance, the loyal servant of the people took his own life. 

There was no place for individual principles in the Soviet system.

A Legal System Weaponized

Given the lack of surviving records, Solzhenitsyn’s accounts of important court cases are all the more precious. He managed to excavate crucial details despite the Soviet regime’s systematic destruction and concealment of archives. Solzhenitsyn noted that judicial order didn’t arise organically from below —  it was orchestrated straight from the top.

As the legal code developed, Lenin himself issued an overhaul. Beyond the original six capital offenses punishable by execution, he added six more. One chilling new capital crime was “propaganda, agitation, participation in, or assistance to organizations or persons whose activities bear an anti-Soviet character.” This expansive clause criminalized not just actions but ideas and affiliation — a clause that some officials used without hesitation. 

The legal system fared no better under Stalin’s iron rule. If anything, the climate of terror intensified. In 1936, Stalin staged public “show trials” of prominent Communists like Kamenev and Zinoviev who had dared to oppose him. They were forced to confess fabricated crimes in rigged proceedings. 

By coopting the judicial system to publicly condemn rivals, Stalin sent the message that no one was safe. Charges were falsified, verdicts predetermined, and “justice” administered swiftly through execution or the gulag. The show trials highlighted that the legal code was now merely a weapon for Stalin to liquidate enemies, real or imagined. 

Solzhenitsyn ended his extensive chronicle of the judiciary with an ironic image— party elites shocked to find themselves entangled in Stalin’s 1937 purge. 

Despite architecting the system, they never imagined its vengeance would turn on them. Their surprise revealed the utter perversion of justice under Stalin. From the Cheka’s extrajudicial killings to the show trials of 1936, the foundations of lawlessness had been laid. 

No one, not even party royalty, was safe from the ruthless code they had devised. The system had achieved its ideal state — the complete subjugation of justice to despotism.

The Rite of Spring

What music could evoke chaos in the wake of a revolution, as Solzhenitsyn chronicles? What dissonant composition mirrors the contorting of the legal system into an instrument of darkness and evil? 

Stravinsky’s masterpiece The Rite of Spring comes to mind. With its jagged rhythms, clashing tones, and pulsating primal energy, the work perfectly encapsulates the tumult of the age. 

Just as The Rite of Spring shocked audiences when it debuted in 1913 with its modernist ferocity, the events following the October Revolution stunned Russian society. Like the violent sequences of Stravinsky’s ballet, the story of the Soviet legal system is one of upheaval and rupture — order and tradition sacrificed to uncontrolled fury. 

The jarring explosions of sound and jerky, propulsive rhythms were unprecedented at the time. To create a raw, primal sound, Stravinsky used innovative techniques like bitonality and octatonic scales. The unconventional melodies and harsh dissonances ignored traditional Western harmony. 

This bold modernist work provoked outrage and even riots at its premiere but soon symbolized the transition between 19th-century Romanticism and the new modern age.

Stravinsky’s ballet builds toward ritual sacrifice; Solzhenitsyn’s book catalogs the lives sacrificed for ideology. Only by upholding truth against lies, bearing witness as Solzhenitsyn did, can we prevent evil from being codified into our systems.

The slide into authoritarianism can be alarmingly incremental, the normalization of injustice gradual. We must remain vigilant against these creeping forces and the human tendency toward complacency.

 The final notes of The Rite of Spring suggest discontinuity more than resolution. Likewise, Solzhenitsyn’s accounts prompt us to remain restless for truth and moral clarity. Even now, the precarious recklessness of those times threatens to reemerge if we forget the lessons etched in history’s frenzied rhythms.