KNOWLEDGE IS LIGHT, IGNORANCE IS DARKNESS
The school that I first ended up in could hardly be called an institution of education. It was a long horizontal barracks divided in half. One half painted cobalt green was for civilian, city schoolchildren, and the other, unpainted, of dark brown wood, was for us, the pupils of correctional labor colonies and orphanages of the USSR NKVD. Down the center of the barracks, there was a dark corridor, and on the sides there were classroom-cells. In each classroom, there was an enormous Dutch stove, covered with metal. By the back wall of the classroom, around the stove, there was a tall pile of damp logs. On the opposite wall there was a blackboard made of a piece of plywood painted black. Above the blackboard hung an old slogan covered in flyspecks:
