ABSTRACT
The time would never come for Solzhenitsyn to lodge an appeal against his sentence by the Special Board. When he returned to the “station” after being told his punishment, Solzhenitsyn found that a sense of suppressed hysteria was beginning to spread among prisoners who already knew their fate. Solzhenitsyn was made extremely uncomfortable by this constant movement and missed the camaraderie of his first five months of imprisonment. At earlier meetings Gammerov had surprised Solzhenitsyn by vehemently expressing his belief in God and taking Solzhenitsyn to task for some disdainful remarks on the subject of religious belief. Solzhenitsyn had been startled that one so young, born in 1923, could be a Christian when he himself, born and baptized a Christian when Christianity was still universal in Russia, had long since lost his faith and declared his atheism.
