The Gulag Archipelago And One Day Essay

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.

Gulag Voices by Anne Applebaum is a collection of stories of people who lived in the Gulag camp system because the NKVD arrested them for political crimes. All of the stories in this novel describe different situations the prisoners endured. Some female prisoners were raped while the male prisoners were sent to concentration camps to support the soviet industry by mining, cutting trees for lumber, or working in factories. This novel gives real background into how the camp system changed their lives and stayed with them forever. Gulag Voices shows the prisoners coped emotionally, psychologically, and physically with being in the camp system. The stories from this novel also show why some of the prisoners were arrested and what the crimes they

Were it a testimony to the rigors and cruelness of human nature, it would be crushing. As it is, it shatters our perception of man and ourselves as no other book, besides perhaps Anne Franke`s diary and the testimony of Elie Wiesl, could ever have done. The prisoners of the labor camp, as in Shukhov?s predicament, were required to behave as Soviets or face severe punishment. In an almost satirical tone Buinovsky exclaims to the squadron that ?You?re not behaving like Soviet People,? and went on saying, ?You?re not behaving like communist.? (28) This type of internal monologue clearly persuades a tone of aggravation and sarcasm directly associated to the oppression?s of communism.

People living under the Nazi or Communist regimes were faces with constant turmoil and fear of the unknown during WWII. In this paper, what elements in a Nazi forced labor camp impacted the prisoners, how is survival addressed, and can there be any free will under these totalitarian regimes? By looking at the works of two survivors from the Nazi death camps and the Stalinist Gulag, I will provide a critical response to each of these questions.

Through the loss of individuality among millions of people, including his own, Rubashov’s moral philosophy was drastically altered by the Party to which he became a victim of. The Communist Party, led by No. 1, also known as Stalin, did not advocate for the importance of the individual. Rather, the Party believed that the well-being of the masses was much more important to a well functioning society. Within the novel, the loss of individuality is quite evident for many reasons. First, people are treated and tortured like animals if they do not support the Party.

The Gulags of the Soviet Union have been compared to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, but in reality they were worse. The Gulags were isolated prison camps peppered across Siberia. Death, torture, and disease raged within their walls, while endless work went on outside. Gulag personnel were cruel and unfeeling, using terrible punishment methods and playing senseless games that cost prisoners their lives. Political enemies of the Bolshevik party made up a significant portion of the prisoner population, with most sent to the infamous camp system Kolyma. Liberation was painfully slow, but by 1960, all of the Gulags were gone.

The novel One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich was published in 1963, and was written by Alexander Solzhenistyn. It follows one day in the life of a Soviet man, and the events that transpire while he is inside Stalin’s labour camps. The lifestyle which people endured in the Soviet labour camps is shown through Solzhenistyn’s writing. This paper will use the novel to demonstrate the survival tactics of various prisoners, and how these strategies helped them survive their day to day lives. It will show how the camp’s operations played a role in shaping the attitudes which the prisoners expressed towards themselves and those around them. It will finalize by equating Ivan Denisovich’s struggles in the novel and his life inside labour camps, with the

The crimes of Stalinism in Europe are endless. The experience of the people who lived under the Soviet regime after the end of World War II lived in a time of terror, hopelessness and misery. For Soviet citizens and the prisoners life was miserable. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a short novel written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is a story about the one day in the life of a person caught between the chaos of the war and the faceless entity that controls their lives. The story takes place somewhere in Siberia in 1951 at a “special” (forced labor) camp. Ivan is sent here after escaping from the Germans that captured him and some other men on the northwest front. Due to the control and paranoia of Stalinism, instead of being welcomed

Throughout the narrative of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, characters are introduced with unique personal backgrounds with each character having performed a “crime” that lead to their imprisonment. The characters are taken to forced labor camps, or gulags, in which they must “work until death”. The absurdity of being forced to work through exhaustion and with a lack of food is accompanied by the unreasonable punishments that are given out to the many innocent prisoners. The overall absurdity of these sentences draws upon the existential framework that emphasizes the idea of a strong internal locus of control - a psychology term stating that a person determines his or her own future and develops based on free will rather than being

Most of books especially those written by survivors about the experience of holocaust have mainly two purposes. The first one is to record the full horror of the historical crimes such as holocaust, labor forced camps, and etc. The second one is detailed explanation and description of the causes and historical origins of that experience. The Gulag Archipelago is a three volume non-fictional book written by a famous Russian historian, novelist, story writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn between 1958 and 1968; however, it was published in 1973 in the West. His book is about the USSR’s forced labor camp system, which is another great holocaust in the history of humanity and its narrative relies on the eyewitness testimonies such as evidence from more than 200 fellow prisoners, his own captivity and exile experiences when he served as a prisoner in one of Gulag labor camps, and other primary research material, mostly during Stalin 's rule from 1929 to 1953.

Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian author with personal experience of labor camp conditions, relates the experiences of his fellow prisoners by showing the world that humanity can be maintained in the most degrading of places. Such a theme can be observed closely in his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, first published in 1962. As the title suggests, the novel is about a day in the Gulag (prison) from dawn to dusk from Ivan’s perspective. The Gulag is designed to strip the Zeks of their individual identities and dignity. The zek’s names are taken from them and replaced by numbers: ‘S 854, “The Tartar read from the white stripe that had been stitched to the back of his black jacket,” (15). Then their personal belongings are taken

Notes from the Underground is one of the works of Dostoevsky who is a misanthropic man living in Russia. This novel contains notes that were written by the author, which is the set of confessions or memoirs in which explanation and description of the alienation from modern society. The Underground Man has a great disrespect for the utilitarianism factor of nineteenth century. In this paper, the concept of enlightenment is described in the context of a kind of enlightenment discussed by the author in Notes from the Underground. The perceptions emphasized by other authors in relation to the ideas and perspective of Dostoevsky are provided in this paper as well.

Have you ever thought how it would be to live during the soviet time? Well in the book I read “ One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn it tells us about how the main character, Ivan lived when they took him to the camp. It shows how difficult of a life he lived and how difficult of a life it was to live during the soviet time. I think the most interesting part of the story was when he was sentenced ten years in a forced labor camp.

Much of GULAG was based on hundreds of letters and memoirs that former prisoners mailed to Solzhenitsyn after One Day was published." (Remnick, 119)

The prisoners are woken up early in the morning by the sound of a hammer on a rail. The rest of the prisoners eat breakfast while Ivan washes the guardhouse floor because he takes too long to get out of bed. Ivan makes it to breakfast just in time to eat his terrible breakfast which is now cold. The guards then search and count the prisoners. Ivan’s group, the 104th, is marched out to the power station to lay bricks. After working all morning they have a surprisingly good meal of oatmeal for lunch and then they are back to work. They work until the supper meal signal is heard. Ivan barely makes it back to the gate of the camp in time, because he wants to get some extra work done. The guards once again count the prisoners, let them in the gate, and search them. Ivan goes straight to the line in the parcel room, after being searched, in order to later trade his forward spot in line for a portion of someone else’s parcel. For his spot in line, Ivan receives two biscuits and a bit of sausage. Shukhov then heads to the mess hall and eats his supper ration. The prisoners are then counted two more times and sent to bed. Ivan for the first time all day has the time to reflect on his day and decides it was bearable; which was all that could be expected.