I was fated to survive, but others, perhaps more talented, stronger than I perished. I myself met but few of them in the Gulag Archipelago, a multitude of scattered island fragments. Indeed, under the millstone of surveillance and mistrust, I did not talk to just any man; of some l only heard; and of others l only guessed. Those with a name in literature who vanished into that abyss are, at least, known; but how many were unrecognized, never once publicly mentioned? And so very few, almost no one ever managed to return. A whole national literature is there, buried without a coffin, without even underwear, naked, a number tagged on its toe. Not for a moment did Russian literature cease, yel from outside it seemed a wasteland. Where a harmonious forest could have grown, were left, after all the cutting, two or three accidentally overlooked.