The Prisoner in the Gulag: The Chimes of Big Ben
The introduction to this series of posts considering whether The Prisoner could reference Soviet Russia may be found here: https://culttvblog.substack.com/p/the-prisoner-in-the-gulag-introduction
I have a couple of asides about the episode, unrelated to the Soviet Union in any way. You will see from the fact that this episode comes straight after Arrival, that I have arbitrarily decided to follow the ITC episode order. I continue to plan a series of posts about different viewing orders for the series, but in my opinion, second is probably too soon for this episode, because unless we assume a signifcant time lapse, it means Number 6 arrives and then immediately manages to ‘escape’, directing attention away from the Village.
My other aside, which I have only just thought about, is that when Number 6 and Number 2 are watching Number 8 waking up in her cottage after her own arrival, it’s a bit pervy watching her waking up in her own bedroom. Surely it means Number 6 is engaging in one of the activities of the state consistently criticised in the show, namely surveillance of the people. And specifically in her bedroom really doesn’t put him on the right side.
But to return to the subject of the Soviet Union. In Arrival, when the taxi driver asked Number 2 for payment she asked for it in ‘credit units’. By this episode (whether or not it’s the second) these units have somehow become attached to work and are referred to consistently as ‘work units’, suggesting that they are a reward for work, rather than just a currency only used in the Village. This attachment of the currency to work is one of the most Soviet things you could ever imagine, since one of the ideals of the Communist state was that everyone would work to the best of their ability, there would be no layabouts, and in return you didn’t really have to worry very much about what would happen to you. In a state which artificially aims to create 100% employment as far as possible, the prospect of not having a job isn’t a huge concern. I would suggest that this artificial creation of work and the use of currency as reward is one of the more obvious possible Soviet references in The Prisoner. I have suggested that the Village is perhaps best interpreted as a parody of the regime in the Soviet Union so that in fact in the Village, people get rewarded for marching around to a band, and occupying themselves in ways that are perhaps not really work anywhere else.
In fact, I think Number 6 may be seen as personifying a specifically Soviet crime called social parsitism. It is also related to work in that it was the crime of living off the efforts of others or society. The act of refusing to work, as Number 6 displays at various points in the series, was criminalised in 1961 by the magnificently named law ‘On Intensification of the Struggle Against Persons who Avoid Socially Useful Work and Lead an Anti-social Parasitic Way of Life,’ which criminalised the homeless, vagrants and intellectuals. It is surely striking that the barmily-named law is exactly the sort of thing that the Village would do and also that Number 6 is fairly obviously exactly who would be targeted for prosecution under the law.
The next aspect of the episode which suggests the Soviet Union is of relevance is the conversation where Number 2 tells Number 6 that both ‘sides’ are becoming the same and it doesn’t matter which one you are on. In the 1960s context, both sides in Europe could only ever mean both sides of the Iron Curtain: the political division of Europe from 1945 to 1991, which as time went on began to reference the huge differences of life and ideology on both sides of boundary, which initially was referenced as a literal border. Not all countries to the east of the curtain were in the USSR, but of relevance to the episode is that Poland was to the East, as were Lithuania and Estonia, both of which were in the Soviet Union. In this division, Britain and the US were allied in NATO and the ‘other side’ meant the countries on the other side of the curtain.
Number 8 is from Estonia, tells Number 6 that the village is in Lithuania, and her fake escape plan is to escape to Poland. It is striking from the point of view of the Cold War that the whole of this episode takes place on the other side of the Iron Curtain from Britain, in a country in the USSR. Remembering that Number 6 has been taken from his own home in London and arrived he known not where, assuming it is in Lithuania and the British authorities are in on the deception, this is hugely impactful and terrifying for viewers in Western Europe in the 1960s.
I have suggested that the Village is a holiday camp parody of Soviet gulags. Similarly the villagers’ production of images of Number 2 can be seen as a sort of DIY parody of Soviet monumental propaganda and aspects of the personality cult of Joseph Stalin. You may raise the objection that at the end of the episode another art competition is announced where the subject is the sea rather than Number 2, but I have no doubt at all that the art would still be heavily reflective of Village values, which I cam happy to link to the Soviet ideal of Socialist Realism in art, where art was only ever applied to the Party ideology, as everything else.
The Village turns gulags into a holiday camp and the art competition turns huge statuary of the Party leading lights into chess pieces. These statues were a strategy by Lenin to propagate revolutionary and communist ideas. Shortly after the revolution statuary and monuments related to the Tsars were removed by law and replaced by appropriate Communist replacements. We have all seen the huge statues of Lenin and Stalin (and in fact the illustration to this post is of a park in Moscow where some remaining ones have all been put together as a sort of museum), but I have only just discovered that there was a list of 67 approved people for the statues, including Russian historical figures and even foreigners. I would also suggest that the grove of busts we periodically see in the show could also reference this tradition, and suggest a propaganda tradition for the Village which otherwise remains unidentified.
At the end of the episode, Fotheringay goes back to London, and Number 8 back to her masters, which suggests that the Village is in fact run by both sides together, something which would have been horrifying to a lot of Westerners at this point.
In conclusion, the episode takes place on the other side of the Iron Curtain, has Number 2 explicitly say that both sides are one, the Village has a Soviet-style approach to work and parodies monumental propaganda and Stalin’s personality cult. I am quite pleased at how well this episode applies to the Soviet Union and particularly with the way it parodies the horrors as a sort of holiday camp.
I initially identifed that the weakness in an identification of The Village as a parody of the Soviet Union was that while everything in the Soviet Union was driven by ideology, there is an apparent lack of ideology driving events in the Village. Obviously, the whole point of the show is that we don’t know what is behind the Village so revealing its ideological basis would of necessity destrot the point of the show. However if you see the grove of busts and art competition as referencing Soviet monumental propaganda, it suggests that there is an ideology behind the Village, and a collection of idealogues to be depicted, even if we atill don’t know who they are. I have often wondered who the figures in the busts are, and at least seeing them this way gives a reason for their existence, even if it doesn’t explain anything.
This episode has proved unexpectedly fruitful for this Soviet Union identification.
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