The Siberian Work Camp and One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich
In Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn describes in three volumes the Russian prison system known as the gulag. That work, like Kafka's The Trial, presents a culture and society where there is no justice - in or out of court. Instead, there is a nameless, faceless, mysterious bureaucracy that imposes its will upon the people, coercing them to submit to the will of the state or face prison or death. In One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, we are presented with exactly what the titles tells us, one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. However, Ivan Denisovich spends his days in the gulag in Siberia, freezing and starving with the other prisoners while he serves the remainder of a ten year sentence. Ivan is not a hero or extraordinary. Instead, he is an ordinary example of the type of individual who spent their days in the gulag. What emerges from these ordinary individuals is the strength and will to survive and at the end of the day, a day that millions of others spent just like Ivan, still find the courage to conclude "Almost a happy day" (Solzhenitsyn 159). This analysis will focus on the historical significance of the event covered in this work, i.e., the daily life of an ordinary prisoner in a Siberian work camp in communist Russia. A conclusion will discuss how a novel provides the reader with a different viewpoint of history than that provided by the pundit or historian.
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There could be few books written on any level (historical, psychological, social, etc.) that reveal as much significance about the historical period when the Russian gulag was in operation under a communist regime than the fiction of Aleksandr Sol...
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...ng and surviving extraordinary conditions much like the victims convicted unfairly to prison work camps across communist Russia in the twentieth century. Thus, the title of Solzhenitsyn's novella is apropos to the historical event described because while we are only witness to Ivan's day and Ivan is an ordinary inhabitant of the gulag, millions of other human beings endured and survived similar days, day in and day out. Thus when Ivan concludes at the end of the novella "Almost a happy day", we see the considerable abilities and capacities of ordinary human beings to retain hope and survive against extraordinary circumstances (Solzhenitsyn 159).
WORKS CITED
Solzhenitsyn, A. One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich. (Only authorized edition). Introduction by Marvin L. Kalb. Foreward by Alexander Tvardovsky. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1963.
"Gulag: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom." Gulag: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. .
Shukhov is a likeable and yet somewhat naïve fellow who is just like everybody else. In fact, what really makes this book remarkable is not Shukhov himself. What makes it special is that, even though at first glance the story may seem to be about Shukhov, it is actually a tale of events and common occurrences that could happen to anyone. The book is not just a detail of one day in the life of Ivan, it is a relatable story of what could happen to anyone shoved into a Russian prison camp. Ivan’s life in the book is shown to be nothing more than a picture of the thousands of lives that were lost or destroyed in the Stalinist camps. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is not one character, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is the picture of “anyman.” Using the depiction of the beliefs, hopes, and need to survive that would arise in a common prisoner Solzhenitsyn creates a story of the victory of humane principles over corruption.
Bardach, Janusz, and Kathleen Gleeson. Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1998. Print.
My project is dedicated to description of the history of Siberia as a place to where send prisoners--from the days of Ivan the Terrible until today. I will tell about the reasons for choosing Siberia as place of exile, the system of prisons and conditions in Siberian prisons.
Being one of the greatest Russian writers of 20th century, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn had a unique talent that he used to truthfully depict the realities of life of ordinary people living in Soviet era. Unlike many other writers, instead of writing about “bright future of communism”, he chose to write about everyday hardships that common people had to endure in Soviet realm. In “Matryona’s Home”, the story focuses on life of an old peasant woman living in an impoverished collectivized village after World War 2 . In the light of Soviet’s propaganda of creating a new Soviet Nation, the reader can observe that Matryona’s personality and way of life drastically contradicted the desired archetype of New Soviet Man. Like most of the people in her village,
Platt, Kevin M. F. and David Brandenberger, eds. Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2006.
Mochulsky, Fyodor Vasilevich. Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir Edited and Translated by Deborah Kaple. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
When Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962, he crossed political barriers in his explanation of the Siberian prison camp. Through his character Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn shows us a normal day in the camp. The book has no chapters, so it is like the reader is spending the day with Ivan. Through this day, he tells of the people, the life conditions, what things are to be done and what things are not to be done. One Day. . . takes us from the wake up call to lights out, with only meals and work between. Nevertheless, because this is only one day, it is hard to really know and understand the characters. Yet, Solzhenitsyn uses flashbacks to show the different sides to his character Ivan Denisovich.
The camp which was the bases of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novel A Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich was initiated by Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1953 until 1956. Stalin, which means “man of steel”, constructed one of the tightest and toughest communisms in history. He is such a dominant figure in Russian history, even though he will always be remembered to heavily contributing to bringing Russia down.
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