The House of the Dead - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"The thought once occurred to me that if one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment, one at which the most fearsome murderer would tremble, shrinking from it in advance, all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning (to him)."

"I subsequently came to understand that in addition to deprivation of freedom, in addition to forced labour, there is in a convict's life one more torment, one that is almost more powerful than all the others. This is forced communal existence."