One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel

Solzhenitsyn's novel on one day in the life of a labor camp prisoner is a good read for anyone who wants to see what a typical day was like in one of Stalin's prison camps. Ivan Denisovich is not in a hard labor camp though, because he is a political prisoner, but the novel still covers many important topics such as food, illness, work, sleep, and society. I found that the ending was particularly powerful as it perfectly parallels the main theme of the book.

One of the best books I have ever read. A true and insightful look into life under tyranny and oppression. Very relevant for today, unfortunately.

Well, if nothing else, *One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich* will make you think twice about complaining about your day at the office or even that overtime shift down at the local minimart. This short novel boils the Soviet gulag experience down to its bare essentials. You're woken up before dawn cold and hungry. You're marched off to work cold and hungry. You're marched back after dark cold and hungry. You get three bowls of thin gruel a day and a few ounces of bread to keep you going. And you're always so cold and hungry you're grateful to have them.

This is one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. It's probably only necessary to describe one of them because all the rest are going to be exactly like it. All 3,650+ of them--a ten-year sentence for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is totalitarianism, Communist-style. The State is so paranoid that it sees enemies everywhere, even in innocent men, of which Shukhov is numbered. By the time we join him, he's in his eighth year of his sentence and so acclimated to the system he's not even sure he wants to leave. Which might not be a bad thing inasmuch as the authorities have a habit of arbitrarily extending a prisoner's sentence just when he thinks he'll be freed.

Solzhenitsyn amply conveys this sense of futility and all the banal horrors and injustices of the gulag, the pettiness of the guards, the corruption of the system and the dehumunization of the prisoners with inarguable effectiveness. But there's a lack of psychological depth in the depiction of Shukhov ((and every other character in the novel)) that seems impossible in the Russian novel after Dostoyevski. Shukhov is, for the most part, a cardboard character set up by Solzhenitsyn to take the blows for what is the real point of this novel: an indictiment of the Stalinism. *One Day* reads a bit like an allegory in that respect, or like the American `muckraking' novels of the early 20th century--works meant to expose some social institution gone horrendously wrong.

As such, *One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich* remains--and probably will forever be--a valuable text for its dramatization of one of the darker periods of human history, and its chronicling of the largely silent sufferings of an entire generation of victims. It writes the story large, however, and, in that sense at least, misses the particulars I personally would have preferred to see rendered. Still and all, a worthwhile, even essential, read.

Quality literature about life in Soviet Union is not available in great quantities. Because of the government controls on press and speech, little could be said that went against the party ranks. "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was only released because Kruschev believed it to be appropriate propoganda against Stalinism and moving past the previous regime. While the product is not flashy, it leaves an impression on the reader.

Solzhenitsyn is gifted in his ability to make the reader see the prison camp. One can almost feel the cold of the Siberian winter as the narrator endures the conditions. One aspect of the book that spoke to me as I read the book is the psychology of being a prisoner. Prisoners are virtually dehumanized and left squabble like animals for the smallest conveniences. When a man loses his home, has no place to go, and has no possessions, a person reduced to accepting any order in the faint hope of survival.

No statement is more poignant than the last paragraph of the book. "Shukov went to sleep that day fully content. He'd had many strokes of luck that day; they hadn't put him in the cells; they hadn't sent his squad to the settlement; he'd swiped a bowl of kasha at dinner; the squad leader had fixed the rates well; he's built a wall and enjoyed doing it; he'd smuggled a bit of a hacksaw blade through; he'd earned a favor from Tsezar that evening; he'd bought that tobacco. And he hadn't fallen ill. He'd gotten over it. A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day." When a person has been reduced by so much, the most trivial pleasures are magnified in importance.

Solzhenitsyn crafts his experience in a russian labor camp into an effective social commentary on communist russia. using the mircocosm of the prison camp and the charcacters in it, he rips apart the Stalinist gov't. if you are interested in communism or just want an account of life in a prison camp, read it. a short and easy read.