The Soviet Prison Labor Camp System

Sofia Petrovna follows the life of Sofia Petrovna, a typist who works at the Leningrad publishing house. After the death of her husband and capture of her son, Sofia goes insane. It’s a type of unhinged that demonstrates itself in mirages minutely dissimilar from the deceits those surrounding her voice to guard themselves. Sofia Petrovna proposes an extraordinary and fundamental account of Stalin's Great Purges through simple fictional story arcs. First, there is the vanishing of seemingly innocent people. Sofia looses several people in her life throughout the duration of the novel with almost no warning or explanation. This provides an effective look into

In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn shows how Soviet prisoners, known as Zeks, are treated while being in the gulag for one day through the eyes of the protagonist and omniscient narrator named Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Despite being in an environment such as the Soviet Union, where there is harsh tundra and not much food to eat, Shukhov tries to make good use of what he has received while trying to keep himself alive. The purpose of Solzhenitsyn’s portrayal of food is to show its overall significance and that it is used as a means of trade and survival. Over time, the power of food reveals its significance to the Zeks and especially to Shukhov and food allows both groups understanding towards the necessity of food for their vitality and well-being additionally.

The work stirred many other Soviet writers to produce works describing their own situations of political imprisonment. Solzhenitsyn soon fell from the state’s grace, however, and was exiled when he attempted to published the first volume of a definitive literary-historical work on the Soviet incarceration system: The Gulag Archipelago. He moved to the USA, where he finished the other two volumes of his masterwork, and returned to Russia in 1996.

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

During World War II the Soviet labor camps were established by the Russian governmental agency called the Gulag. While in effect these camps housed about fourteen million people, in which almost half of these prisoners were imprisoned without a trial. The conditions within these camps were inhumane, which resulted in the death of many prisoners. As seen in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” the only way to survive in these labor camps was to stay “nourished.” Not only must one stay physically nourished, but they must also be mentally nourished. In order to keep one-self “properly” nourished, they must encompass certain qualities in order to survive.

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.

The Gulag Camp System was established in the Soviet Union during the 1930’s. These camps forced people to do intense labor under harsh conditions. Whether large or small, each camp was known for its brutality. During these harsh times it was hard to ignore what was going on, however no one could prevent it from happening. People feared for their lives when the thought of Gulags came up, as referenced in the book 1984, written by George Orwell.

The following paper will be an analysis of "The Great Terror," that is, the arrest and often execution of millions of Russian and Russian minorities from 1936 to 1938, carried out by the Soviet secret police, known as, and hereafter referred to as the NKVD. The analysis will use Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg's, a Russian professor and writer who was arrested early into the purges and experienced, as well as survived, it in its entirety, memoir a Journey Into the Whirlwind as a primary source. More specifically, it will focus on Ginzburg's arrest and

My understanding of the culture and the contextual considerations was deepened from the discussions and certain articles presented in class. The subjects brought to light were the unjust conditions and punishments of the 20th Century Soviet Russia under the oppressive Gulag system, the struggles for human dignity and the importance of faith. These articles explained the ways of the Gulag System in the early 19th century and the unjust mindsets of people prevailing in the society.

In this novel the prevailing question is how to live life with a sense of significance, the prisoners in the gulag camp undergo ghastly conditions but by making peace with how their life is they can move on and continue a positive life. Shukhov is a prime example in which case he is unchanged by the camp, he keeps strict morals and has a specific code of ethics all the while braving through the heinous gulag camp. The storyteller states, “At five o’clock that morning reveille was sounded [...] The clanging ceased, but everything outside still looked like the middle of the night when ivan Denisovich Shukhov got up to go to the bucket [...] He always got up at once, for the next ninety minutes, until they assembled for work” (Solzhenitsyn 6), this statement of Shukhov’s actions would prove how he lived with a purpose and went straight to work.

This is an incredibly significant book in Soviet history and Alexander Solzhenitsyn used it as a way to show the pain and suffering the government had put upon

The simple fact that the entire novel is based on just one day in the camp just depicts the immense struggle for the prisoners. The loss of time itself is a major punishment for the prisoners. Solzhenitsyn’s handling of time through this novel is truly

The interactive oral help provide me the groundwork behind many of the questions I have while reading the book. There was much detail that I can’t fully recall. Regardless, I remember that to the Russians, the gulags were hell just as the concentration camps were hell for the Jews and minorities in the Third Reich. It also helped me come to the conclusion of what I think is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s subscripts of communism, principle roles within a family and lastly relationships in the book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

(Solzhenitsyn, 12) No regard for a living, breathing, human being that is carrying an ice-cold bucket of water in freezing temperature. That taken with the facts that the guards constantly searched the prisoners in a Gulag camp in the middle of Siberian country where escape was nearly impossible, treated any comfort or amenity to the prisoners as dangerous weapons, and relied on a system of spies and squealers to dole out punishments challenges the reader to ponder on how anyone could live with a semblance of normalcy in the prison, not matter what they were charged with nor what their personalities are like. Solzhenitsyn effectively uses the guards and their dialogues in order to present to the Soviet people how the system which they spent their whole lives dedicated to with very little return actually treated its

“For he was used to the brutally cold conditions back at camp,” Ann Holm shows us in her novel, “I Am David,” how harsh the Soviet Union Work Camps, A.K.A the Gulag, were. David the main character of the novel is able to escape a Gulag camp with the help of a prison guard. He flees to Italy and eventually is able to find his mother. But beforehand Holm reveals the harsh life of a Gulag Camp in three ways, the prisoners were starved, forced to live in drastically cold conditions, and she shows how brutal the guards were.