Solzhenitsyn's A Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

The Great Terror was one of the single greatest loss of lives in the history of the world. It was a crusade of political tyranny in the Soviet Union that transpired during the late 1930’s. The Terrors implicated a wide spread cleansing of the Communist Party and government officials, control of peasants and the Red Army headship, extensive police over watch, suspicion of saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries, and illogical slayings. Opportunely, some good did come from the terrors nonetheless. Two of those goods being Sofia Petrovna and Requiem. Both works allow history to peer back into the Stalin Era and bear witness to the travesties that came with it. Through the use of fictional story telling and thematic devises Sofia Petrovna and Requiem, respectively, paint a grim yet descriptive picture in a very efficient manner.

To begin with, this book educated the reader about the past. Everyone in the Soviet Union looked up to the leader, Stalin, even though he wasn’t a good leader at all. He caused many problems for the citizens including uncomfortable living conditions. This book educates the reader by showing that back then even when people were treated badly, they still had to look up to their leader even though he was the cause of all

“In the struggle with falsehood art always did win and it always does win!” Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident, espoused this philosophy to the Swedish Academy. He spoke of the power of art in combating the tyranny and lies of a corrupt government, and as a medium for evaluating society. He was at various times, a soldier in the Soviet army, a political prisoner of the Soviet state, a celebrity for his literary works, and an exile from all of Russia. His fiery philippic against Stalin landed him in prison for eight years; his account of prison life made him immensely popular during the de-Stalinization years of the early 1960’s, and he was deported for his most famous work, The Gulag Archipelago. He has become a symbol of the

Many of Man's struggles are usually the result of societal standards, control, and punishment. These struggles are present in both One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Through setting and internal monologue, both authors depict the effects of the brutalities of communism on Man's spirituality.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich concentrates on one man, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, as he lives through one day in a Soviet gulag. The conditions of the camp are harsh, illustrating a world that has no tolerance for independence. Camp prisoners depend almost totally on each other's productivity and altruism, even for the most basic human needs. The dehumanising atmosphere of the gulag ironically forces prisoners to discover means to retain their individuality while conforming to the harsh rules, spoken and unspoken, of the camp. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich serves as a powerful reminder of the resilience of the human spirit. Solzhenitsyn provides his

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said in his impactful narrative that paints a picture of the Gulag labor camps in Soviet Russia through personal experience, eyewitness testimony and interviews, and primary research material. Solzhenitsyn is describing the silence that survivors of the Gulag were forced to exhibit after staring terror and fear directly in the face during their time in the Gulag. The silence Solzhenitsyn is describing, is claimed to be one of the reason the Gulag is often not given the attention in history books and in the forefront of our minds that the Gulag deserves. The Gulag is believed to be one of the most horrible and inhuman acts of the 20th century, yet western society tends to shy away from mentioning the Gulag when discussing tragedy. This paper will examine historians’ views on the Gulag and why it has been overlooked in history as the horrible tragedy it was and the impact that this silence has had, not only on the survivors, but also the impact it has had on Russia and its society as a whole.

Mandelshtam was imprisoned and tortured for his satirization of Stalin and his fascist policies. Even when in captivity, however, Mandelshtam retained some of his brazen qualities, evident in how while, “the 1933 “Epigram” offers an unambiguous attack on a fascist dictator, the “Ode” can be read as a celebration of fascism, but inasmuch as the celebration is fascist, it exposes Stalin as fascist as well” (Brinkey). Mandelshtam, sent away to a labor camp, was forced into a sort of rebellious form of repentance. His contrived poems glorifying Stalin were double-edged swords, acknowledging his fascist basis even if it was theoretically derived from praise. This final retaliation was ultimately his downfall. Soon after its publication, a “letter from Vladimir Stavsky, the General Secretary of the Writers Union, to Nikolai Yezkov, the Soviet Commissar of Internal Affairs…describes Mandelshtam as “a writer of obscene, libellous verse about the leadership of the Party and all the Soviet people”…[and] recommends Mandelshtam’s [re]arrest” (Brinkley). Mandelshtam’s “Ode to Stalin” was meant to satiate the hunger of Socialist Realism’s grip on all artistic output; however, his attempted reconciliation with the Soviet Union was

At this point, Solzhenitsyn begins his critique of the Western world; his first major point being the West’s “decline in courage” (2). “The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society” (2-3). Solzhenitsyn suggests—years ahead of his time—that the West is growing weary in their opposition of threats to their society, such as the Marxism-Leninism of the Soviet Union. This is what

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn follows a Russian prison inmate, Shukhov, through a standard day in the gulag system. The novel displays Shukhov’s struggle to survive through inhumane conditions and how he deals and tolerates his suppressive and endless lifestyle. The novel provides insight into the differing ideals and philosophical views that the very diverse groups of prisoners hold. By using tools such as perspective and time, Solzhenitsyn provides a platform from which he can bring multiple levels of meaning to an otherwise monotonous and uneventful account.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was best known for his novel, One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, which explores a day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, who was imprisoned in a Soviet labor camp. Solzhenitsyn, being a previous denizen of a similar camp, effectively conveys the hardships and dilemmas these prisoners faced through the use of dramatic irony and tone. Solzhenitsyn uses irony to reflect his opinion that loyalty to the Soviet regime was futile and had no purpose whatsoever. He uses the tone to express his emotions regarding the unfair imprisonment of the characters through the analepses provided for Tiurin, Senka and Sukhov.

Although the characters find themselves constrained by language and space in Solzhenitsyn’s novel, there is a much more oppressive and restrictive force at play: time. Time is a driving force in the narrative from the very beginning, evident in Solzhenitsyn’s choice to feature only one day of Ivan Denisovich’s life. This single-day plot stresses that Shukhov’s days no longer belong to himself, but rather they belong to the Soviet government. One day to someone who is free is considered a singular unit of time in the regular ebb and flow of everyday life, but one day for Shukhov carries tremendous weight as a small part of his lengthy sentence. “There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like that in his stretch.” (Solzhenitsyn, 167) Each day was not planned out according to Shukhov’s wishes and impulses but

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and John Scott’s memoir, Behind the Urals are two texts which are centered on the life in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s regime. Solzhenitsyn’s book is a work of fiction where the protagonist is working in a labour camp in the 1950s while Scott’s work is centered around his life as an American in the Soviet Union during the early period of Stalin’s rule, where the conditions were still harsh, but there was an element of freedom that still existed. Throughout both texts, the lives of the protagonists have been describes as harsh, cold and dirty. Both characters faced the same challenges which were accessing basic necessities such as warm clothing and food.

While One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich only shows the audience just that, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn leaves readers thinking about the dehumanizing nature of Soviet system as a whole. In the Gulag, time no longer matters or is available to the prisoners. Their entire day is dictated through superiors barking commands that must be followed. By only revealing one day, Solzhenitsyn shows just how tedious and simple life is in this work camp. The most depressing part of the novel comes when Shukhov describes the day as “almost a happy one” because he “hadn’t been dragged off to the hole” or how he “swiped some extra gruel” (181). Knowing that this day was one of the good ones, Solzhenitsyn leaves the audience to agonize about what the bad days contain.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn developed a first-hand experience when he was thrown in a Soviet Union labor camp called the Gulag. This experience influenced him to write his work, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, for the intentions of raising an awareness of the Soviet Union forced labor camp system. As the title advocates, the novel follows a lingering time period of one day and conveys a glimpse at what life was like in a Soviet Union labor camp from the point of view of the prisoners. Solzhenitsyn uses the setting to impact the effectiveness of the mood within the work, which is reflected through the characters. In the work, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn uses the historical setting to relieve his criticisms about Soviet totalitarianism.

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Great Russian author who was a very dark and mysterious; who only wrote about what he saw throughout his life. Fyodor Dostoevsky was born November 11, 1821 in Moscow Russia; he was the second child out of seven. His father was an Army doctor who worked in a local hospital. His mother was a very kind and generous woman, she taught Dostoevsky how to read and write he later studied religion and French. When he was nine years old he had is first epilepsy spell, a first they weren’t for sure what it was but later found out what it was. (Fyodor Dostoevsky Biography)