One day of Ivan Denisovich content. Solzhenitsyn “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” - the history of creation and publication. Analysis of the work's character system

Year: 1959 Genre: story

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn wrote the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1959. It became the first work about Soviet concentration camps, bringing him worldwide fame. This is a story about one day of an ordinary Soviet prisoner. The events of the story written by Solzhenitsyn take place at the beginning of the 51st year of the 20th century.

It was winter. At 5 am in the camp, as always, the rise was announced. It was dark and cold outside. And in the large barracks for hundreds of people there was also a terrible cold. Prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov was sick, so he really didn’t want to get up.

Today their team was supposed to be transferred to the construction of another facility. Because of the terrible cold, no one wanted this. The foreman, Andrei Prokofievich Tyurin, had to negotiate the cancellation of the transfer to a new facility for a bribe, of course, a kilogram of lard.

Shukhov decided to go to the medical unit. He has already served 8 years out of the required 10. Shukhov was transferred to this camp from another: he previously served his sentence in Ust-Izhma. The duty officer turned to Shukhov and said that he would receive three days in a punishment cell for failure to comply with the lifting time. The entire 104th brigade saw Ivan Denisovich being taken away from the barracks.

The duty officer took Shukhov to the headquarters barracks, where he had to wash the floor. Ivan was very happy about this, because it was flooded here. He got to work. Having wiped the floors under the close attention of the guards, Shukhov went to the dining room for another portion of gruel.

It was cold in the dining room. Black cabbage with millet was eaten in hats. Teammate Fetyukov was guarding Shukhov’s already cold breakfast. Ivan took off his hat; he always had a spoon with him, in his felt boots. Slowly, he ate it all, breaking off pieces of the almost frozen porridge.

After breakfast, Shukhov remembered that he had agreed to buy two glasses of samosada from the Latvian from the neighboring barracks. But the medical unit was more needed. There was only one guy there in the morning - paramedic Kolya. Nikolai Semenovich knew that Shukhov was not faking. But he could not be released from work, since two prisoners were much more seriously ill.

Ivan Denisovich went to work with a slight fever. Along the way, he received a weighted ration of bread and underwent a morning inspection for prohibited foods and letters. A local artist updated the number Shch-854 on Shukhov’s padded jacket to make it easier to see. Otherwise, you could end up in a punishment cell.

In the new year, Shukhov had the right to two letters, but he himself did not want more. Ivan Denisovich left home on June 23, 1941, immediately after the start of the war. His family also wrote to him twice a year. Shukhov did not understand their life, their problems. His wife was waiting for Ivan with the hope that when he returned, he would earn a lot of money and put his children on their feet. Shukhov was not very hopeful: he didn’t know how to cheat, he didn’t take or give bribes.

Work went to each of the brigade: some carried water, others carried sand, others cleared snow. Shukhov, as the first master, got the job of laying the walls with cinder blocks. He carried it out together with his partner, the Latvian Kildiks, whose prison term was 25 years. Until noon, cinder blocks were lifted by hand to the second floor. For lunch, the workers were given oatmeal. Shukhov got a double portion.

Work on laying the wall continued. Considering the frost, there was no time to hesitate: the solution set quickly. Shukhov admired the well-done work late in the evening, when everyone had left.

After dinner and the evening check, Ivan Denisovich climbed onto his bed and lit a cigarette. He didn’t want to sleep at all, because the day had turned out to be successful:

They didn’t put me in a punishment cell;
A brigade was not sent for new construction;
For lunch he received a double portion of porridge;
The foreman closed the interest well;
Shukhov laid out the wall cheerfully;
I didn’t get caught on a search with a hacksaw found, from which I was going to make a shoe knife;
I bought two glasses of samosada tobacco for 2 rubles;
Almost recovered without getting sick.

And there were 3653 such days in his period from call to call.

The story teaches moral overcoming, preserving human dignity even in conditions in which survival can be very difficult.

Picture or drawing One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich

Morning

The action of the work covers only one day. Both the work itself and the brief retelling presented in this article are devoted to its description. “One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich” begins as follows.

Shukhov Ivan Denisovich wakes up at 5 o'clock in the morning. He is in Siberia, in a camp for political prisoners. Today Ivan Denisovich is not feeling well. He wants to stay in bed longer. However, the guard, a Tatar, discovers him there and sends him to wash the floor in the guardhouse. Nevertheless, Shukhov is glad that he managed to escape the punishment cell. He goes to paramedic Vdovushkin to get an exemption from work. Vdovushkin takes his temperature and reports that it is low. Shukhov then goes to the dining room. Here prisoner Fetyukov saved breakfast for him. Having taken it, he again goes to the barracks to hide the soldering in the mattress before roll call.

Roll call, clothing set incident (brief retelling)

Solzhenitsyn (“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”) is further interested in organizational issues in the camp. Shukhov and other prisoners go to roll call. Our hero buys a pack of tobacco, which is sold by a man nicknamed Caesar. This prisoner is a metropolitan intellectual who lives well in the camp, since he receives food parcels from home. Volkov, a cruel lieutenant, sends guards to find more from the prisoners. It is found in Buinovsky, who spent only 3 months in the camp. Buinovsky is sent to a punishment cell for 10 days.

Letter from Shukhov's wife

A column of prisoners finally goes to work, accompanied by guards with machine guns. On the way, Shukhov reflects on his wife’s letters. Our brief retelling continues with their content. It is not for nothing that one day of Ivan Denisovich, described by the author, includes memories of letters. Shukhov probably thinks about them very often. His wife writes that those who returned from the war do not want to go to the collective farm; all young people go to work either in a factory or in the city. The men do not want to stay on the collective farm. Many of them make a living by stenciling carpets, and this brings in good income. Shukhov’s wife hopes that her husband will return from the camp and also begin to engage in this “trade,” and they will finally live richly.

The protagonist’s squad works at half capacity that day. Ivan Denisovich can take a break. He takes out the bread hidden in his coat.

Reflection on how Ivan Denisovich ended up in prison

Shukhov reflects on how he ended up in prison. Ivan Denisovich went to war on June 23, 1941. And already in February 1942 he found himself surrounded. Shukhov was a prisoner of war. He miraculously escaped from the Germans and with great difficulty reached his own. However, due to a careless story about his misadventures, he ended up in a Soviet concentration camp. Now, for the security agencies, Shukhov is a saboteur and spy.

Dinner

This brings us to the description of lunch time in our short retelling. One day of Ivan Denisovich, as described by the author, is in many ways typical. Now it’s time for lunch, and the whole squad goes to the dining room. Our hero is lucky - he gets an extra bowl of food (oatmeal). Caesar and another prisoner argue in the camp about Eisenstein's films. Tyurin talks about his fate. Ivan Denisovich smokes a cigarette with tobacco, which he took from two Estonians. After this, the squad gets to work.

Social types, description of work and camp life

The author (his photo is presented above) presents the reader with a whole gallery of social types. In particular, he talks about Kavtorang, who was a naval officer and managed to visit the prisons of the tsarist regime. Other prisoners are Gopchik (a 16-year-old teenager), Alyosha the Baptist, Volkov - a cruel and merciless boss who regulates the entire life of prisoners.

A description of work and life in the camp is also presented in the work describing 1 day of Ivan Denisovich. A brief retelling cannot be made without saying a few words about them. All people's thoughts are focused on getting food. They feed very little and poorly. For example, they give gruel with small fish and frozen cabbage. The art of life here is to get an extra bowl of porridge or ration.

In the camp, collective work is based on shortening the time from one meal to the next as much as possible. In addition, to stay warm, you should move. You need to be able to work correctly so as not to overwork. However, even in such difficult conditions of the camp, people do not lose their natural joy from accomplished work. We see this, for example, in the scene when the crew is building a house. In order to survive, you must be more dexterous, more cunning, and smarter than the guards.

Evening

A short retelling of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is already approaching the end. Prisoners return from work. After the evening roll call, Ivan Denisovich smokes cigarettes and also treats Caesar. He, in turn, gives the main character some sugar, two cookies and a piece of sausage. Ivan Denisovich eats sausage and gives one cookie to Alyosha. He reads the Bible and wants to convince Shukhov that solace should be sought in religion. However, Ivan Denisovich cannot find it in the Bible. He simply returns to his bed and before going to bed thinks about how this day can be called successful. He still has 3,653 days left to live in the camp. This concludes the brief retelling. We described one day of Ivan Denisovich, but, of course, our story cannot be compared with the original work. Solzhenitsyn's skill is undeniable.

The first work about Stalin's camps published in the USSR. The description of an ordinary day for an ordinary prisoner is not yet a complete account of the horrors of the Gulag, but it also produces a deafening effect and deals a blow to the inhumane system that gave birth to the camps.

comments: Lev Oborin

What is this book about?

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, aka number Shch-854, has been in the camp for nine years. The story (in length - more like a story) describes his usual day from wake-up until lights out: this day is full of both hardships and small joys (as far as one can talk about joys in the camp), clashes with the camp authorities and conversations with comrades in misfortune, selfless work and small tricks that make up the struggle for survival. “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was, in fact, the first work about the camps to appear in the Soviet press - for millions of readers it became a revelation, a long-awaited word of truth and a brief encyclopedia of life in the Gulag.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. 1953

Laski Collection/Getty Images

When was it written?

Solzhenitsyn conceived the story about one day of a prisoner in the camp, in 1950-1951. Direct work on the text began on May 18, 1959 and lasted 45 days. At the same time - the end of the 1950s - the work on the second edition of the novel “In the First Circle”, the collection of materials for the future “Red Wheel”, the plan for the “GULAG Archipelago”, the writing of “Matryonin’s Dvor” and several “Krokhotka” dates back to this time; At the same time, Solzhenitsyn teaches physics and astronomy at a Ryazan school and is being treated for the consequences of cancer. At the beginning of 1961, Solzhenitsyn edited One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, softening some details so that the text became at least theoretically “passable” for the Soviet press.

The house in Ryazan where Solzhenitsyn lived from 1957 to 1965

In the summer of 1963, “One Day...” appears in a secret CIA report on the cultural policy of the USSR: the intelligence services know that Khrushchev personally authorized the publication

How is it written?

Solzhenitsyn sets himself a strict time frame: the story begins with a wake-up call and ends with going to bed. This allows the author to show the essence of the camp routine through many details and to reconstruct typical events. “He did not construct, essentially, any external plot, did not try to start the action abruptly and unravel it more effectively, did not stir up interest in his narrative with the tricks of literary intrigue,” noted critic Vladimir Lakshin 1 Lakshin V. Ya. Ivan Denisovich, his friends and foes // Criticism of the 50-60s of the XX century / comp., preamble, notes. E. Yu. Skarlygina. M.: LLC “Agency “KRPA Olimp”, 2004. P. 118. ⁠ : The reader's attention is held by the courage and honesty of the descriptions.

“One day...” is adjacent to the tradition of skaz, that is, the depiction of oral, non-bookish speech. In this way, the effect of direct perception “through the eyes of the hero” is achieved. At the same time, Solzhenitsyn mixes different layers of language in the story, reflecting the social reality of the camp: the jargon and abuse of prisoners coexist with the bureaucracy of abbreviations, the vernacular of Ivan Denisovich - with various registers of the intelligent speech of Caesar Markovich and kavtorank Captain of the second rank. ⁠ Buinovsky.

How did I not know about Ivan Shukhov? How could he not feel that on this quiet frosty morning he, along with thousands of others, was being taken under escort with dogs outside the camp gates into a snowy field - to the object?

Vladimir Lakshin

What influenced her?

Solzhenitsyn’s own camp experience and testimonies of other camp inmates. Two large, different order traditions of Russian literature: essay (influenced the concept and structure of the text) and tale, from Leskov to Remizov (influenced the style, language of the characters and the narrator).

In January 1963, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published in Roman-Gazeta with a circulation of 700,000 copies

The first edition of the story in the New World. 1962

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published thanks to a unique combination of circumstances: there was a text by the author, who survived the camp and miraculously recovered from a serious illness; there was an influential editor willing to fight for this text; there was a request from the authorities to support anti-Stalinist revelations; there were personal ambitions of Khrushchev, for whom it was important to emphasize his role in de-Stalinization.

At the beginning of November 1961, after much doubt whether it was time or not, Solzhenitsyn handed over the manuscript Raisa Orlova Raisa Davydovna Orlova (1918-1989) - writer, philologist, human rights activist. From 1955 to 1961 she worked in the magazine “Foreign Literature”. Together with her husband Lev Kopelev, she spoke in defense of Boris Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In 1980, Orlova and Kopelev emigrated to Germany. In exile, their joint book of memoirs “We Lived in Moscow” and the novels “Doors Open Slowly” and “Hemingway in Russia” were published. Orlova’s book of memoirs, “Memories of Non-Past Time,” was published posthumously. ⁠ , the wife of his friend and former prisoner Lev Kopelev Lev Zinovievich Kopelev (1912-1997) - writer, literary critic, human rights activist. During the war, he was a propaganda officer and translator from German; in 1945, a month before the end of the war, he was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison “for promoting bourgeois humanism” - Kopelev criticized looting and violence against the civilian population in East Prussia. At the Marfinskaya Sharashka I met Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Since the mid-1960s, Kopelev has been involved in the human rights movement: speaking out and signing letters in defense of dissidents, distributing books through samizdat. In 1980, he was deprived of citizenship and emigrated to Germany with his wife, writer Raisa Orlova. Among Kopelev’s books are “Keep Forever”, “And He Made Himself an Idol”, and the memoirs “We Lived in Moscow” were written in co-authorship with his wife. ⁠ , later published in the novel “In the First Circle” under the name Rubin. Orlova brought the manuscript to the New World editor and critic Anne Berser Anna Samoilovna Berzer (real name Asya; 1917-1994) - critic, editor. Berzer worked as an editor at Literaturnaya Gazeta, the Soviet Writer publishing house, and the Znamya and Moscow magazines. From 1958 to 1971 she was the editor of Novy Mir: she worked with texts by Solzhenitsyn, Grossman, Dombrovsky, Trifonov. Berser was known as a brilliant editor and author of witty critical articles. In 1990, Berzer’s book “Farewell,” dedicated to Grossman, was published. ⁠ , and she showed the story to the editor-in-chief of the magazine, poet Alexander Tvardovsky, bypassing his deputies. Shocked, Tvardovsky launched an entire campaign to get the story published. A chance for this was given by the recent Khrushchev revelations on XX and XXII Congresses of the CPSU On February 14, 1956, at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev made a closed report condemning Stalin’s personality cult. At the XXII Congress, in 1961, anti-Stalinist rhetoric became even harsher: words were publicly spoken about Stalin’s arrests, torture, and crimes against the people, and it was proposed to remove his body from the Mausoleum. After this congress, settlements named in honor of the leader were renamed, and monuments to Stalin were eliminated. ⁠ , Tvardovsky’s personal acquaintance with Khrushchev, the general atmosphere of the thaw. Tvardovsky received positive reviews from several major writers - including Paustovsky, Chukovsky and Ehrenburg, who was in favor.

This streak used to be so happy: everyone was given ten. And from forty-nine such a streak began - everyone was twenty-five, regardless
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The leadership of the CPSU proposed making several amendments. Solzhenitsyn agreed to some, in particular, to mention Stalin in order to emphasize his personal responsibility for terror and the Gulag. However, throw away the words of Brigadier Tyurin: “You are still there, Creator, in heaven. You endure for a long time and you hit painfully.” Solzhenitsyn refused: “... I would give in if it were at my own expense or at literary expense. But then they offered to give in at the expense of God and at the expense of the peasant, and I promised to never do this. do" 2 Solzhenitsyn A.I. A calf butted an oak tree: Essays on literary life. M.: Consent, 1996. P. 44. ⁠ .

There was a danger that the story, which was already selling copies, would “leak” abroad and be published there - this would close the possibility of publication in the USSR. “That the flight to the West did not happen for almost a year is a miracle no less than the publication itself in the USSR,” Solzhenitsyn noted. Ultimately, in 1962, Tvardovsky was able to convey the story to Khrushchev - the Secretary General was excited by the story, and he authorized its publication, and for this he had to argue with the top of the Central Committee. The story was published in the November 1962 issue of Novy Mir with a circulation of 96,900 copies; later another 25,000 were printed - but this was not enough for everyone, “One Day...” was distributed in lists and photocopies. In 1963, “One Day...” was re-released "Roman-newspaper" One of the largest circulation Soviet literary publications, published since 1927. The idea was to publish works of art for the people, as Lenin put it, “in the form of a proletarian newspaper.” Roman-Gazeta published works by major Soviet writers - from Gorky and Sholokhov to Belov and Rasputin, as well as texts by foreign authors: Voynich, Remarque, Hasek. ⁠ circulation is already 700,000 copies; this was followed by a separate book edition (100,000 copies). When Solzhenitsyn fell into disgrace, all these publications began to be confiscated from libraries, and until perestroika, “One Day...”, like other works of Solzhenitsyn, was distributed only in samizdat and tamizdat.

Alexander Tvardovsky. 1950 Editor-in-Chief of Novy Mir, where “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was first published

Anna Berzer. 1971 Editor of Novy Mir, who gave Solzhenitsyn's manuscript to Alexander Tvardovsky

Vladimir Lakshin. 1990s. Deputy editor-in-chief of Novy Mir, author of the article “Ivan Denisovich, his friends and foes” (1964)

How was she received?

The highest favor towards Solzhenitsyn's story became the key to favorable responses. In the first months, 47 reviews appeared in the Soviet press with loud headlines: “You must be a citizen...”, “In the name of man,” “Humanity,” “Harsh truth,” “In the name of truth, in the name of life” (the author of the latter is an odious critic Vladimir Ermilov, who participated in the persecution of many writers, including Platonov). The motive of many reviews is that repressions are a thing of the past: for example, a front-line writer Grigory Baklanov Grigory Yakovlevich Baklanov (real name Friedman; 1923-2009) - writer and screenwriter. He went to the front at the age of 18, fought in the artillery, and ended the war with the rank of lieutenant. Since the early 1950s, he has been publishing stories and stories about the war; his story “An Inch of Earth” (1959) was sharply criticized for the “trench truth”; the novel “July 41” (1964), which described Stalin’s destruction of the high command of the Red Army, was not republished for 14 years after its first publication. During the years of perestroika, Baklanov headed the magazine “Znamya”; under his leadership, “Heart of a Dog” by Bulgakov and “We” by Zamyatin were published for the first time in the USSR. ⁠ He calls his review “So that this never happens again.” In the first, “ceremonial” review in Izvestia (“About the past in the name of the future”), Konstantin Simonov asked rhetorical questions: “Whose evil will, whose boundless arbitrariness could tear these Soviet people - farmers, builders, workers, warriors - from their families, from work, and finally from the war against fascism, to put them outside the law, outside society?” Simonov concluded: “It seems that A. Solzhenitsyn showed himself in his story as a true assistant to the party in the sacred and necessary task of fighting the cult of personality and its consequences" 3 The word makes its way: Collection of articles and documents about A. I. Solzhenitsyn. 1962-1974 / intro. L. Chukovskaya, comp. V. Glotser and E. Chukovskaya. M.: Russian way, 1998. pp. 19, 21. ⁠ . Other reviewers fit the story into the larger realistic tradition, comparing Ivan Denisovich with other representatives of the “people” in Russian literature, for example with Platon Karataev from War and Peace.

Perhaps the most important Soviet review was the article by Novomir critic Vladimir Lakshin “Ivan Denisovich, his friends and foes” (1964). Analyzing “One Day...”, Lakshin writes: “The story clearly indicates the time of action - January 1951. And I don’t know about others, but while reading the story, my thoughts kept coming back to what I was doing, how I was living at that time.<…>But how come I didn’t know about Ivan Shukhov? How could he not feel that on this quiet frosty morning he, along with thousands of others, was being taken under guard with dogs outside the camp gates into a snowy field - to object? 4 Lakshin V. Ya. Ivan Denisovich, his friends and foes // Criticism of the 50-60s of the XX century / comp., preamble, notes. E. Yu. Skarlygina. M.: LLC “Agency “KRPA Olimp”, 2004. P. 123. ⁠ Anticipating the end of the Thaw, Lakshin tried to protect the story from possible persecution, making reservations about its “partisanship,” and objected to critics who reproached Solzhenitsyn for the fact that Ivan Denisovich “cannot ... claim the role of the folk type of our era” (that is, he does not fit into normative socialist realist model), that his “whole philosophy is reduced to one thing: to survive!” Lakshin demonstrates - directly from the text - examples of Shukhov’s steadfastness, preserving his personality.

Prisoner of Vorkutlag. Komi Republic, 1945.
Laski Diffusion/Getty Images

Valentin Kataev called “One Day...” false: “the protest is not shown.” Korney Chukovsky objected: “But that’s all Truth story: the executioners created such conditions that people lost the slightest concept of justice...<…>...And Kataev says: how dare he not protest, at least under the covers. Did Kataev himself protest a lot during the Stalinist regime? He composed slave hymns, just like All" 5 Chukovsky K.I. Diary: 1901-1969: In 2 volumes. M.: OLMA-Press Star World, 2003. T. 2. P. 392. ⁠ . Anna Akhmatova’s oral review is known: “This story must be read and learned by heart - every citizen of all two hundred million citizens of the Soviet Union" 6 Chukovskaya L.K. Notes about Anna Akhmatova: in 3 volumes. M.: Soglasie, 1997. T. 2. P. 512. ⁠ .

After the release of “One Day...” the editors of Novy Mir and the author himself began to receive mountains of letters with gratitude and personal stories. Former prisoners asked Solzhenitsyn: “You should write a large and equally truthful book on this topic, depicting not just one day, but entire years”; “If you have started this great thing, continue it and further" 7 “Dear Ivan Denisovich!..” Letters from readers: 1962-1964. M.: Russian way, 2012. P. 142, 177. ⁠ . Materials sent by Solzhenitsyn’s correspondents formed the basis of “The Gulag Archipelago.” “One Day...” was enthusiastically received by Varlam Shalamov, the author of the great “Kolyma Stories” and in the future an ill-wisher of Solzhenitsyn: “The story is like poetry - everything in it is perfect, everything is expedient.”

The prisoner's thought - and that one is not free, keeps coming back, stirs things up again: will they find the solder in the mattress? Will the medical unit be released in the evening? Will the captain be imprisoned or not?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Of course, negative reviews also came: from Stalinists who justified the terror, from people who were afraid that the publication would damage the international prestige of the USSR, from those who were shocked by the rude language of the heroes. Sometimes these motivations were combined. One reader, a former free foreman in places of detention, was indignant: who gave Solzhenitsyn the right to “indiscriminately denounce both the order existing in the camp and the people who are called upon to protect the prisoners...<…>The hero of the story and the author do not like these orders, but they are necessary and necessary for the Soviet state!” Another reader asked: “So tell me, why, like banners, unfurl your dirty trousers in front of the world?<…>I cannot perceive this work, because it humiliates my dignity of the Soviet person" 8 “Dear Ivan Denisovich!..” Letters from readers: 1962-1964. M.: Russian way, 2012. pp. 50-55, 75. ⁠ . In “The Gulag Archipelago,” Solzhenitsyn also cites indignant letters from former employees of the punitive authorities, including such self-justifications: “We, the performers, are also people, we also went to heroism: we did not always shoot those who were falling and, thus, risked our service" 9 Solzhenitsyn A.I. The GULAG Archipelago: In 3 volumes. M.: Center “New World”, 1990. T. 3. P. 345. ⁠ .

In emigration, the release of “One Day...” was perceived as an important event: the story was not only strikingly different in tone from the Soviet prose available in the West, but also confirmed the information known to emigrants about Soviet camps.

In the West, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was met with attention - among left-wing intellectuals, according to Solzhenitsyn, it raised the first doubts about the progressiveness of the Soviet experiment: “The only reason everyone lost their tongues was that it was published with the permission of the Central Committee in Moscow, this shocked." But this also led some reviewers to doubt the literary quality of the text: “This is a political sensation, not a literary one.<…>If we change the scene to South Africa or Malaysia... we get an honest but crudely written essay about completely incomprehensible people" 10 Magner T. F. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich // The Slavic and East European Journal. 1963. Vol. 7. No. 4. Pp. 418-419. ⁠ . For other reviewers, politics did not overshadow the ethical and aesthetic significance of the story. American Slavist Franklin Reeve Franklin Reeve (1928-2013) - writer, poet, translator. In 1961, Reeve became one of the first American professors to come to the USSR on exchange; in 1962 he was an interpreter for the poet Robert Frost during his meeting with Khrushchev. In 1970, Reeve translated Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Nobel Prize speech. From 1967 to 2002 he taught literature at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Reeve is the author of more than 30 books: poems, novels, plays, critical articles, translations from Russian. ⁠ expressed concern that “One Day” would be read solely as “another performance at the international political Olympics,” a sensational exposure of totalitarian communism, while the meaning of the story is much broader. The critic compares Solzhenitsyn with Dostoevsky, and “One Day” with “The Odyssey,” seeing in the story “the deepest affirmation of human value and human dignity”: “In this book, an “ordinary” person in inhumane conditions is studied to the most depths" 11 Reeve F. D. The House of the Living // Kenyon Review. 1963. Vol. 25. No. 2. Pp. 356-357. ⁠ .

Dishes of prisoners in a forced labor camp

Prisoners of Vorkutlag. Komi Republic, 1945

Laski Diffusion/Getty Images

For a short time, Solzhenitsyn became a recognized master of Soviet literature. He was accepted into the Writers' Union, he published several more works (the most notable is the long story “Matryonin's Dvor”), and the possibility of awarding him the Lenin Prize for “One Day...” was seriously discussed. Solzhenitsyn was invited to several “meetings of party and government leaders with cultural and artistic figures” (and left caustic memories of this). But from the mid-1960s, with the end of the Thaw that began under Khrushchev, censorship stopped allowing Solzhenitsyn’s new works: the newly rewritten “In the First Circle” and “Cancer Ward” never appeared in the Soviet press until perestroika, but were published in the West. “The accidental breakthrough with “Ivan Denisovich” did not at all reconcile the System with me and did not promise easy movement further,” he later explained Solzhenitsyn 12 Solzhenitsyn A.I. A calf butted an oak tree: Essays on literary life. M.: Consent, 1996. P. 50. ⁠ . At the same time, he worked on his main book, “The Gulag Archipelago,” a unique and meticulous study of the Soviet punitive system, as far as the author’s circumstances allowed. In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize - primarily for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and in 1974 he was deprived of Soviet citizenship and deported abroad - the writer would live in exile for 20 years, remaining an active publicist and increasingly speaking in irritating role of teacher or prophet.

After perestroika, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was republished dozens of times, including as part of the 30-volume collected works of Solzhenitsyn (M.: Vremya, 2007) - the most authoritative to date. In 1963, an English television play was made based on the work, and in 1970, a full-fledged film adaptation (a joint production of Norway and Great Britain; Solzhenitsyn reacted positively to the film). “One Day” was staged in the theater more than once. The first Russian film adaptation should appear in the coming years: in April 2018, Gleb Panfilov began filming a film based on Ivan Denisovich. Since 1997, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” has been included in the compulsory school literature curriculum.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. 1962

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“One Day” - the first Russian work about the Great Terror and the camps?

No. The first prose work about the Great Terror is considered to be the story “Sofya Petrovna” by Lydia Chukovskaya, written back in 1940 (Chukovskaya’s husband, the outstanding physicist Matvey Bronstein, was arrested in 1937 and executed in 1938). In 1952, the novel “Imaginary Values” by second-wave emigrant Nikolai Narokov was published in New York, describing the very height of Stalin’s terror. Stalin's camps are mentioned in the epilogue of Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. Varlam Shalamov, whose “Kolyma Tales” is often contrasted with Solzhenitsyn’s prose, began writing them in 1954. The main part of Akhmatova’s “Requiem” was written in 1938-1940 (at that time her son Lev Gumilyov was in the camp). In the Gulag itself, works of art were also created - especially poetry, which was easier to remember.

It is usually said that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was the first published work about the Gulag. A caveat is needed here. On the eve of the publication of One Day, the editors of Izvestia, already aware of Tvardovsky’s struggle for Solzhenitsyn, published the story Georgy Shelest Georgy Ivanovich Shelest (real name - Malykh; 1903-1965) - writer. In the early 1930s, Shelest wrote stories about the Civil War and partisans, and worked for Transbaikal and Far Eastern newspapers. In 1935 he moved to the Murmansk region, where he worked as secretary of the editorial board of “Kandalaksha Communist”. In 1937, the writer was accused of organizing an armed uprising and sent to the Ozerlager; 17 years later he was rehabilitated. After his release, Shelest went to Tajikistan, where he worked on the construction of a hydroelectric power station, and there he began writing prose on a camp theme. ⁠ “Nugget” is about communists who were repressed in 1937 and panning for gold in Kolyma (“At the editorial meeting of Izvestia, Adzhubey was angry that it was not his newspaper that was “discovering” an important topic" 13 Solzhenitsyn A.I. A calf butted an oak tree: Essays on literary life. M.: Consent, 1996. P. 45. ⁠ ). Tvardovsky, in a letter to Solzhenitsyn, complained: “...For the first time, such words as “oper”, “sexot”, “morning prayer”, etc. were introduced into use on the printed page. how" 14 “Dear Ivan Denisovich!..” Letters from readers: 1962-1964. M.: Russian way, 2012. P. 20. ⁠ . Solzhenitsyn was initially upset by the appearance of Shelest’s story, “but then I thought: why is he interfering?<…>“Pioneering” the topic - I think they didn’t succeed. What about words? But we didn’t invent them, we can’t get a patent for them costs" 15 “Dear Ivan Denisovich!..” Letters from readers: 1962-1964. M.: Russian way, 2012. P. 25. ⁠ . The emigrant magazine “Posev” in 1963 spoke contemptuously of “Nugget”, believing that it was an attempt “on the one hand, to establish the myth that in the camps it was the good security officers and party members who suffered and died from the evil Uncle Stalin; on the other hand, by showing the mood of these good security officers and party members, to create a myth that in the camps, enduring injustice and torment, the Soviet people, by their faith in the regime, by their “love” for it, remained Soviet people" 16 The brigade commander of the Cheka-OGPU “remembers” the camps... // Posev. 1962. No. 51-52. P. 14. ⁠ . At the end of Shelest’s story, the prisoners who found a gold nugget decide not to exchange it for food and shag, but to hand it over to their superiors and receive gratitude “for helping the Soviet people in difficult days” - Solzhenitsyn, of course, has nothing similar, although many Gulag prisoners actually remained true-believing communists (Solzhenitsyn himself wrote about this in “The Gulag Archipelago” and the novel “In the First Circle”). Shelest’s story went almost unnoticed: there were already rumors about the imminent publication of “One Day...”, and it was Solzhenitsyn’s text that became a sensation. In a country where everyone knew about the camps, no one expected that the truth about them would be expressed publicly, in thousands of copies - even after the XX and XXII Congresses of the CPSU, at which the repressions and Stalin’s cult of personality were condemned.

Corrective labor camp in Karelia. 1940s

Does One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich depict life in the camp truthfully?

The main judges here were the former prisoners themselves, who rated “One Day...” highly and wrote letters of gratitude to Solzhenitsyn. Of course, there were individual complaints and clarifications: in such a painful topic, every little detail was important to Solzhenitsyn’s comrades in misfortune. Some prisoners wrote that “the regime of the camp where Ivan Denisovich was imprisoned was very easy.” Solzhenitsyn confirmed this: the special prison in which Shukhov served the last years of his imprisonment was no match for the camp in Ust-Izhma, where Ivan Denisovich suffered scurvy and lost his teeth.

Some reproached Solzhenitsyn for exaggerating the prisoner’s zeal for work: “No one would, at the risk of leaving himself and the brigade without food, continue to lay wall" 17 Abelyuk E. S., Polivanov K. M. History of Russian literature of the 20th century: A book for enlightened teachers and students: In 2 books. M.: New Literary Review, 2009. P. 245. ⁠ , - however, Varlam Shalamov pointed out: “The passion for the work of Shukhov and other brigadiers when they are laying a wall is subtly and correctly shown.<…>This passion for work is somewhat akin to that feeling of excitement when two hungry columns overtake each other.<…>It’s possible that this kind of passion for work saves people.” “How can Ivan Denisovich survive ten years, day and night just cursing his work? After all, he’s the one who should hang himself on the first bracket!” — wrote later Solzhenitsyn 18 Solzhenitsyn A.I. The GULAG Archipelago: In 3 volumes. M.: Center “New World”, 1990. T. 2. P. 170. ⁠ . He believed that such complaints come from “former idiots In the camp, prisoners who got a privileged, “dust-free” position were called idiots: cook, clerk, storekeeper, duty officer. ⁠ and their never-sitting intelligent friends.”

But none of the Gulag survivors accused Solzhenitsyn of lying and distorting reality. Evgenia Ginzburg, the author of “Steep Route,” when offering her manuscript to Tvardovsky, wrote about “One Day...”: “Finally, people learned from the original source about at least one day of the life that we led (in different versions) for 18 years.” . There were a lot of similar letters from camp inmates, although “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” does not mention even a tenth of the hardships and atrocities that were possible in the camps—Solzhenitsyn performs this work in “The Gulag Archipelago.”

Barracks for prisoners of Ponyslag. Perm region, 1943

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Why did Solzhenitsyn choose such a title for the story?

The fact is that Solzhenitsyn did not choose him. The name under which Solzhenitsyn sent his manuscript to Novy Mir is “Shch-854,” the personal number of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov in the camp. This name focused all attention on the hero, but was unpronounceable. The story also had an alternative title or subtitle - “One Day of One Prisoner.” Based on this option, the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir Tvardovsky proposed “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Here the focus is on time, duration, and the title turns out to be almost equal to the content. Solzhenitsyn easily accepted this successful option. It is interesting that Tvardovsky proposed a new name for “Matryonin’s Dvor,” which was originally called “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man.” Here, censorship considerations primarily played a role.

Why one day and not a week, month or year?

Solzhenitsyn specifically resorts to a limitation: during one day, many dramatic, but generally routine events take place in the camp. “There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his term from bell to bell”: this means that these events, familiar to Shukhov, are repeated day after day, and one day is not much different from another. One day is enough to show the entire camp - at least that relatively “prosperous” camp under the relatively “prosperous” regime in which Ivan Denisovich had to sit. Solzhenitsyn continues to list numerous details of camp life even after the climax of the story - laying cinder blocks at the construction of a thermal power plant: this emphasizes that the day does not end, there are still many painful minutes ahead, that life is not literature. Anna Akhmatova noted: “In Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the details irritate me. The leg went numb, one shark died, a hook was inserted, a hook was not inserted, etc. And all to no avail. And here every detail is needed and road" 19 Saraskina L. I. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. M.: Young Guard, 2009. P. 504. ⁠ .

“The action takes place for a limited time in a confined space” is a characteristic essay device (you can recall texts from "physiological" collections Collections of works in the genre of everyday, morally descriptive essays. One of the first “physiological” collections in Russia is “Ours, Copied from Life by Russians,” compiled by Alexander Bashutsky. The most famous is the almanac “Physiology of St. Petersburg” by Nekrasov and Belinsky, which became the manifesto of the natural school. ⁠ , individual works by Pomyalovsky, Nikolai Uspensky, Zlatovratsky). “One Day” is a productive and understandable model, which even after Solzhenitsyn is used by “review” and “encyclopedic” texts that no longer adhere to the realist agenda. Over the course of one day (and - almost all the time - in one closed space) an action is performed; Vladimir Sorokin clearly writes his “Day of the Oprichnik” with an eye on Solzhenitsyn. (By the way, this is not the only similarity: the hypertrophied “folk” language of “The Day of the Oprichnik” with its vernacular, neologisms, and inversions refers to the language of Solzhenitsyn’s story.) In Sorokin’s “Blue Fat,” lovers Stalin and Khrushchev discuss the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” written by a former prisoner of the “Crimean forced love camps” (LOVELAG); the leaders of the people are dissatisfied with the insufficient sadism of the author - here Sorokin parodies the long-standing dispute between Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov. Despite the clearly travesty nature, the fictional story retains the same “one-day” structure.

Map of forced labor camps in the USSR. 1945

Why does Ivan Denisovich have the number Shch-854?

Assigning numbers, of course, is a sign of dehumanization - prisoners officially do not have names, patronymics or surnames, they are addressed like this: “Yu forty-eight! Hands back!”, “Be five hundred and two! Pull yourself up!” An attentive reader of Russian literature will remember here Zamyatin’s “We,” where the heroes bear names like D-503, O-90, but in Solzhenitsyn we are faced not with dystopia, but with realistic detail. The number Shch-854 has no connection with the real name of Shukhov: the hero of “One Day”, captain of the rank Buinovsky, had the number Shch-311, Solzhenitsyn himself had the number Shch-262. Prisoners wore such numbers on their clothes (in the famous staged photograph of Solzhenitsyn, the number is sewn on a padded jacket, trousers and cap) and were obliged to monitor their condition - this brings the numbers closer to the yellow stars that Jews were ordered to wear in Nazi Germany (other persecuted people had their own marks Nazi groups - gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses...). In German concentration camps, prisoners also wore numbers on their clothes, and in Auschwitz they were tattooed on their arms.

Numerical codes generally play an important role in camp dehumanization 20 Pomorska K. The Overcoded World of Solzhenitsyn // Poetics Today. 1980. Vol. 1. No. 3, Special Issue: Narratology I: Poetics of Fiction. P. 165. ⁠ . Describing the morning divorce, Solzhenitsyn talks about dividing the camp prisoners into brigades. People are counted by head, like cattle:

- First! Second! Third!
And the fives separated and walked in separate chains, so that you could look from behind or from front: five heads, five backs, ten legs.
And the second watchman, the controller, stands silently at the other railings, just checking to see if the bill is correct.

Paradoxically, these seemingly worthless heads are important for reporting: “Man is more valuable than gold. If one head behind the wire is missing, you’ll add your head there.” Thus, among the repressive forces of the camp, one of the most significant is the bureaucracy. Even the smallest, absurd details speak of this: for example, Shukhov’s prisoner Caesar did not have his mustache shaved off in the camp, because in the photograph in the investigative case he has a mustache.

Vorkutlag punishment cell. Komi Republic, 1930–40s

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Padded jacket with a number, worn by prisoners of forced labor camps

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In what camp was Ivan Denisovich imprisoned?

The text of “One Day” makes it clear that this camp is a “convict” camp, relatively new (no one has yet served a full term there). We are talking about a special camp - the camps created for political prisoners received this name in 1948, although hard labor was returned to the penitentiary system back in 1943. The action of “One Day” takes place, as we remember, in 1951. From Ivan Denisovich’s previous camp odyssey it follows that for most of his term he spent most of his time in Ust-Izhma (Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) along with criminals. His new campmates believe that this is still not the worst fate The purpose of the special camps was to isolate “enemies of the people” from ordinary prisoners. The regime there was similar to a prison: bars on the windows, barracks locked at night, a ban on leaving the barracks after hours, and numbers on clothes. Such prisoners were used for particularly difficult work, for example in mines. However, despite the more difficult conditions, for many prisoners the political zone was a better fate than a domestic camp, where the “political” were terrorized by the “thieves”. ⁠ : “You, Vanya, spent eight years in prison - in what camps?.. You were in domestic camps, you lived there with the women. You didn’t wear numbers.”

Indications of a specific place in the text of the story itself are only indirect: for example, already on the first pages, the “old camp wolf” Kuzyomin tells the new arrivals: “Here, guys, the law is the taiga.” However, this saying was common in many Soviet camps. The winter temperature in the camp where Ivan Denisovich sits can drop below forty degrees - but such climatic conditions also exist in many places: in Siberia, the Urals, Chukotka, Kolyma, and the Far North. The name “Sotsgorodok” could give a clue (in the morning Ivan Denisovich dreams that his brigade would not be sent there): there were several settlements with this name (all of them were built by prisoners) in the USSR, including in places with a harsh climate, but this is the typical the name also “depersonalizes” the scene of action. Rather, one must assume that the conditions of the special camp in which Solzhenitsyn himself was imprisoned are reflected in the camp of Ivan Denisovich: Ekibastuz convict camp, later - part Steplaga A camp for political prisoners, which was located in the Karaganda region of Kazakhstan. Steplag prisoners worked in the mines: they mined coal, copper and manganese ores. In 1954, there was an uprising in the camp: five thousand prisoners demanded the arrival of a Moscow commission. The revolt was brutally suppressed by troops. Two years later, Steplag was liquidated. ⁠ In Kazakhstan.

Forced Labor Camp Honor Board

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Why was Ivan Denisovich imprisoned?

Solzhenitsyn writes openly about this: Ivan Denisovich fought (he went to the front in 1941: “The woman, the boss, left me in the forty-first year”) and was captured by the Germans, then broke out from there to his own - but the stay of the Soviet being a soldier in German captivity was often equated with treason. According to NKVD 21 Krivosheev G. F. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century: Statistical research / Under the general editorship. G. F. Krivosheeva. M.: OLMA-Press, 2001. P. 453-464. ⁠ , out of 1,836,562 prisoners of war who returned to the USSR, 233,400 people were sent to the Gulag on charges of treason. Such people were convicted under Article 58, paragraph 1a, of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (“Treason to the Motherland”).

And this is how it happened: in February 1942, their entire army was surrounded in the North-West, and nothing was thrown from the planes for them to eat, and there were no planes. They went so far as to trim the hooves of dead horses, soak that cornea in water and eat it. And there was nothing to shoot with. And so little by little the Germans caught them in the forests and took them. And in such a group, Shukhov was held captive for a couple of days, there, in the forests, and the five of them ran away. And they sneaked through forests and swamps - miraculously they got to their own people. Only two were killed by his machine gunner on the spot, the third died from his wounds - two of them survived. If they were smarter, they would say that they were wandering through the forests, and it wouldn’t matter to them. And they opened up: they say, from German captivity. From captivity?? Holy shit! Fascist agents! And to jail. If there were five of them, maybe they would compare the testimonies and believe them, but they wouldn’t believe two of them: they said, the bastards agreed to escape.

Counterintelligence agents beat Shukhov to sign statements against himself (“if you don’t sign, it’s a wooden pea coat; if you sign, you’ll at least live a little longer”). By the time the story takes place, Ivan Denisovich has been in the camp for the ninth year: he is due to be released in mid-1952. The penultimate phrase of the story - “There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his term from bell to bell” (let’s pay attention to the long, “in words”, writing out the numerals) - does not allow us to say unequivocally that Ivan Denisovich will be released: after all, many camp prisoners those who served their sentence received a new one instead of being released; Shukhov is also afraid of this.

Solzhenitsyn himself was convicted under paragraphs 10 and 11 of Article 58 for anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation during wartime: in personal conversations and correspondence, he allowed himself to criticize Stalin. On the eve of his arrest, when the fighting was already taking place on German territory, Solzhenitsyn withdrew his battery from the German encirclement and was presented with the Order of the Red Banner, but on February 9, 1945 he was arrested in East Prussia.

Gate of the Vorkutlag coal mine. Komi Republic, 1945

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Prisoners at work. Ozerlag, 1950

What position does Ivan Denisovich occupy in the camp?

The social structure of the Gulag can be described in different ways. Let's say, before the establishment of special welfare camps, the contingent of the camps was clearly divided into criminals and political ones, “Article 58” (in Ust-Izhma, Ivan Denisovich belongs, of course, to the latter). On the other hand, prisoners are divided into those who participate in “general work” and “morons” - those who managed to take a more advantageous place, a relatively easy position: for example, get a job in an office or a bread slicer, work in a specialty needed in camp (tailor, shoemaker, doctor, cook). Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago” writes: “...Among the survivors, among those who were freed, idiots make up a very significant proportion; among long-term residents from the Fifty-Eighth - it seems to me - 9/10.” Ivan Denisovich does not belong to the “morons” and treats them with contempt (for example, he generally calls them “morons”). “When choosing the hero of the camp story, I took a hard worker, I couldn’t take anyone else, because only he can see the true relationships of the camp (as soon as an infantry soldier can weigh the whole weight of the war, but for some reason he is not the one writing the memoirs). This choice of the hero and some harsh statements in the story puzzled and offended other former idiots,” Solzhenitsyn explained.

Among the hard workers, as well as among the “morons,” there is a hierarchy. For example, “one of the last brigadiers” Fetyukov, in freedom - “a big boss in some office”, does not enjoy anyone’s respect; Ivan Denisovich privately calls him “Fetyukov the Jackal.” Another brigadier, Senka Klevshin, who visited Buchenwald before, probably has a harder time than Shukhov, but he is approximately on an equal footing with him. Brigadier Tyurin occupies a special position - he is the most idealized character in the story: always fair, capable of protecting his own and saving them from murderous conditions. Shukhov is aware of his subordination to the foreman (it is important here that, according to the camp’s unwritten laws, the foreman is not one of the “morons”), but for a short time he can feel equality with him: “Go, foreman! Go, you are needed there! - (Shukhov calls him Andrei Prokofievich, but now his work is on par with the foreman. It’s not that he thinks so: “Now I’m equal,” but he just feels that it’s so.).”

Ivan Denisych! You don’t need to pray for a parcel to be sent or for an extra portion of gruel. What is high among people is an abomination before God!
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

An even more subtle matter is the relationship between the “common man” Shukhov and the intellectual prisoners. Both Soviet and uncensored criticism sometimes reproached Solzhenitsyn for insufficient respect for intellectuals (the author of the contemptuous term “education” actually gave reason for this). “What worries me in the story is the attitude of the common people, all these camp workers towards those intellectuals who are still worried and still continue, even in the camp, to argue about Eisenstein, about Meyerhold, about cinema and literature and about the new performance by Yu. Zavadsky. .. Sometimes you can feel the author’s ironic and sometimes contemptuous attitude towards such people,” wrote critic I. Chicherov. Vladimir Lakshin catches him in the fact that not a word is said about Meyerhold in “One Day...”: for a critic this name is “only a sign of particularly refined spiritual interests, a kind of evidence of intelligence" 22 Lakshin V. Ya. Ivan Denisovich, his friends and foes // Criticism of the 50-60s of the XX century / comp., preamble, notes. E. Yu. Skarlygina. M.: LLC “Agency “KRPA Olimp”, 2004. P. 116-170. ⁠ . In Shukhov’s attitude towards Caesar Markovich, whom Ivan Denisovich is ready to serve and from whom he expects reciprocal services, there is indeed irony - but, according to Lakshin, it is connected not with Caesar’s intelligence, but with his isolation, with the same ability to get settled, with the preserved and in the camp with snobbery: “Caesar turned around, extended his hand for the porridge, at Shukhov and did not look, as if the porridge itself had arrived by air, and for his own: “But listen, art is not what, but how.” It is no accident that Solzhenitsyn puts side by side a “formalistic” judgment about art and a dismissive gesture: in the value system of “One Day...” they are completely interconnected.

Vorkutlag. Komi Republic, 1930–40s

Ivan Denisovich - an autobiographical hero?

Some readers tried to guess in which of the heroes Solzhenitsyn drew himself: “No, this is not Ivan Denisovich himself! And not Buinovsky... Or maybe Tyurin?<…>Is it really a paramedic-writer who, without leaving good memories, is still not so bad?" 23 “Dear Ivan Denisovich!..” Letters from readers: 1962-1964. M.: Russian way, 2012. P. 47. ⁠ His own experience is the most important source for Solzhenitsyn: he entrusts his feelings and ordeals after his arrest to Innocent Volodin, the hero of the novel “In the First Circle”; the second of the main characters of the novel, prisoner of the sharashka Gleb Nerzhin, is emphatically autobiographical. The Gulag Archipelago contains several chapters describing Solzhenitsyn's personal experiences in the camp, including attempts by the camp administration to persuade him to secretly cooperate. Both the novel “Cancer Ward” and the story “Matryonin’s Dvor” are autobiographical, not to mention Solzhenitsyn’s memoirs. In this respect, the figure of Shukhov is quite far from the author: Shukhov is a “simple”, unlearned person (unlike Solzhenitsyn, an astronomy teacher, he, for example, does not understand where the new month comes from after the new moon in the sky), a peasant, an ordinary person, and not a battalion commander. However, one of the effects of the camp is precisely that it erases social differences: the ability to survive, preserve oneself, and earn the respect of fellow sufferers becomes important (for example, Fetyukov and Der, who were bosses in freedom, are among the most disrespected people in the camp). In accordance with the essay tradition, which Solzhenitsyn willingly or unwillingly followed, he chose not an ordinary, but a typical (“typical”) hero: a representative of the most extensive Russian class, a participant in the most massive and bloody war. “Shukhov is a generalized character of the Russian common man: resilient, “evil-willed,” hardy, a jack of all trades, crafty—and kind. Brother of Vasily Terkin,” wrote Korney Chukovsky in a review of the story.

A soldier named Shukhov actually fought alongside Solzhenitsyn, but was not in the camp. The camp experience itself, including work in construction BUR High security barracks. ⁠ and thermal power plant, Solzhenitsyn took from his own biography - but admitted that he would not have endured everything that his hero went through: “Probably, I would not have survived eight years of camps if, as a mathematician, I had not been taken for four years at the so-called sharashka."

Exiled Alexander Solzhenitsyn in a camp padded jacket. 1953

Can “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” be called a Christian work?

It is known that many camp inmates retained their religiosity in the most brutal conditions of Solovki and Kolyma. Unlike Shalamov, for whom the camp is an absolutely negative experience, convincing that God No 24 Bykov D. L. Soviet literature. Advanced course. M.: PROZAIK, 2015. pp. 399-400, 403. ⁠ The camp helped Solzhenitsyn strengthen his faith. During his life, including after the publication of “Ivan Denisovich,” he composed several prayers: in the first of them, he thanked God for being able to “send to Humanity a reflection of Your rays.” Protopresbyter Alexander Shmeman Alexander Dmitrievich Shmeman (1921-1983) - clergyman, theologian. From 1945 to 1951, Schmemann taught Church history at the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris. In 1951 he moved to New York, where he worked at St. Vladimir's Seminary, and in 1962 he became its director. In 1970, Schmemann was elevated to the rank of protopresbyter, the highest priestly rank for married clergy. Father Schmemann was a famous preacher, wrote works on liturgical theology, and hosted a program about religion on Radio Liberty for almost thirty years. ⁠ , citing this prayer, calls Solzhenitsyn a great Christian writer 25 Shmeman A., protopres. Great Christian writer (A. Solzhenitsyn) // Shmeman A., protopres. Fundamentals of Russian culture: Conversations on Radio Liberty. 1970-1971. M.: Publishing house of the Orthodox St. Tikhon's University for the Humanities, 2017. pp. 353-369. ⁠ .

Researcher Svetlana Kobets notes that “Christian topoi are scattered throughout the text of One Day.” There are hints of them in images, language formulas, conditional notation" 26 Kobets S. The Subtext of Christian Asceticism in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich // The Slavic and East European Journal. 1998. Vol. 42. No. 4. P. 661. ⁠ . These hints bring a “Christian dimension” to the text, which, according to Kobets, ultimately determines the ethics of the characters, and the habits of the camp inmate, which allow him to survive, go back to Christian asceticism. Hardworking, humane, who have retained their moral core, the heroes of the story, with this view, are likened to martyrs and righteous people (remember the description of the legendary old prisoner Yu-81), and those who have settled more comfortably, for example Caesar, “do not get a chance for spiritual awakening" 27 Kobets S. The Subtext of Christian Asceticism in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich // The Slavic and East European Journal. 1998. Vol. 42. No. 4. P. 668. ⁠ .

One of Shukhov’s fellow prisoners is Baptist Alyoshka, a reliable and devout believer who believes that the camp is a test that serves the salvation of the human soul and God’s glory. His conversations with Ivan Denisovich go back to The Brothers Karamazov. He tries to instruct Shukhov: he notices that his soul “asks to pray to God,” explains that “you don’t need to pray for a parcel to be sent or for an extra portion of gruel.<…>We need to pray about spiritual things: so that the Lord will remove the evil scum from our hearts...” The story of this character sheds light on Soviet repressions against religious organizations. Alyoshka was arrested in the Caucasus, where his community was located: both he and his comrades received twenty-five-year sentences. Baptists and Evangelical Christians In 1944, Evangelical Christians and Baptists living in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus united into one denomination. The doctrine of Evangelical Christians - Baptists is based on the Old and New Testaments, there is no division into clergy and laity in the confession, and baptism is carried out only at a conscious age. ⁠ were actively persecuted in the USSR since the early 1930s; during the years of the Great Terror, the most important figures of Russian Baptists died - Nikolai Odintsov, Mikhail Timoshenko, Pavel Ivanov-Klyshnikov and others. Others, whom the authorities considered less dangerous, were given standard camp sentences of that time - 8-10 years. The bitter irony is that these terms still seem feasible and “happy” to the camp inmates of 1951: “This period used to be so happy: everyone was given ten. And from forty-nine, such a streak began - everyone was twenty-five, no matter what.” Alyoshka is sure that the Orthodox Church “has moved away from the Gospel. They don’t imprison them or give them five years because their faith is not firm.” However, Shukhov’s own faith is far from all church institutions: “I willingly believe in God. But I don’t believe in heaven and hell. Why do you consider us fools and promise us heaven and hell?” He notes to himself that “Baptists love to agitate, like political instructors.”

Drawings and comments by Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya from the book “How Much is a Man Worth.” In 1941, Kersnovskaya, a resident of Bessarabia occupied by the USSR, was transferred to Siberia, where she spent 16 years

From whose perspective is the story told in “One Day”?

The impersonal narrator of “Ivan Denisovich” is close to Shukhov himself, but not equal to him. On the one hand, Solzhenitsyn reflects the thoughts of his hero and actively uses improperly direct speech. More than once or twice what happens in the story is accompanied by comments that seem to come from Ivan Denisovich himself. Behind the cries of captain Buinovsky: “You have no right to undress people in the cold! You ninth article According to the ninth article of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1926, “social protection measures cannot be aimed at causing physical suffering or humiliation of human dignity and do not set themselves the task of retribution or punishment.” ⁠ You don’t know the criminal code!..” follows the following comment: “They have. They know. This is something you, brother, don’t know yet.” In her work on the language of “One Day,” linguist Tatyana Vinokur gives other examples: “The foreman of everything is shaking. It’s shaking, it won’t stop,” “our column reached the street, and the mechanical plant disappeared behind the residential area.” Solzhenitsyn resorts to this technique when he needs to convey the feelings of his hero, often physical, physiological: “Nothing, it’s not very cold outside” or about a piece of sausage that Shukhov gets in the evening: “With her teeth! With teeth! Meat spirit! And real meat juice. It went there, to the stomach.” Western Slavists talk about the same thing, using the terms “indirect internal monologue”, “depicted speech”; British philologist Max Hayward traces this technique to the tradition of Russian tale 28 Rus V. J. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Point of View Analysis // Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes. Summer-Fall 1971. Vol. 13. No. 2/3. P. 165, 167. ⁠ . For the narrator, the fairy tale form and folk language are also organic. On the other hand, the narrator knows something that Ivan Denisovich cannot know: for example, that paramedic Vdovushkin is not writing a medical report, but a poem.

According to Vinokur, Solzhenitsyn, constantly shifting his point of view, achieves a “fusion of hero and author,” and by switching to first-person pronouns (“our column reached the street”), he rises to that “highest level” of such a merger, “which gives him the opportunity to especially persistently emphasize their empathy, to remind them again and again of their direct involvement in those depicted events" 29 Vinokur T. G. About the language and style of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” // Questions of speech culture. 1965. Issue. 6. pp. 16-17. ⁠ . Thus, although biographically Solzhenitsyn is not at all equal to Shukhov, he can say (just as Flaubert said about Emma Bovary): “Ivan Denisovich is me.”

How is the language structured in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” mixes several linguistic registers. Usually, the first thing that comes to mind is the “folk” speech of Ivan Denisovich himself and the fairy-tale speech of the narrator himself, which is close to it. In “One Day...” readers for the first time encounter such characteristic features of Solzhenitsyn’s style as inversion (“And that Sotsbytgorodok is a bare field, in the snowy ridges”), the use of proverbs, sayings, phraseological units (“a trial is not a loss,” “a warm, cold when will he understand?”, “in the wrong hands the radish is always thicker”), colloquial compression In linguistics, compression is understood as the reduction and compression of linguistic material without significant damage to the content. ⁠ in the conversations of the characters (“guarantee” - guaranteed ration, “Vecherka” - newspaper “Vechernyaya” Moscow") 30 Dozorova D. V. Compressive word-formation means in the prose of A. I. Solzhenitsyn (based on the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”) // The legacy of A. I. Solzhenitsyn in the modern cultural space of Russia and abroad (on the occasion of the 95th anniversary of the writer’s birth ): Sat. mat. Intl. scientific-practical conf. Ryazan: Concept, 2014. pp. 268-275. ⁠ . The abundance of improperly direct speech justifies the sketchy style of the story: we get the impression that Ivan Denisovich does not explain everything to us on purpose, like a tour guide, but is simply accustomed, in order to maintain clarity of mind, to explain everything to himself. At the same time, Solzhenitsyn more than once resorts to the author’s neologisms, stylized as vernacular - linguist Tatyana Vinokur names such examples as “under-smoking”, “to catch up”, “to take a breath”, “to groan”: “This is an updated composition of the word, many times increasing its emotional significance, expressive energy, the freshness of its recognition.” However, although “folk” and expressive lexemes in the story are remembered most of all, the bulk is still “general literary vocabulary" 31 Vinokur T. G. About the language and style of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” // Questions of speech culture. 1965. Issue. 6. pp. 16-32. ⁠ .

The camp speech of the peasant Shukhov and his comrades is deeply ingrained by thieves' jargon (“kum” is the detective officer, “knock” is to inform, “kondey” is the punishment cell, “six” is the one who serves others, “popka” is the soldier on the tower, “ idiot" - a prisoner who got a lucrative position in the camp), the bureaucratic language of the punitive system (BUR - high security barracks, PPCH - planning and production unit, nachkar - chief of the guard). At the end of the story, Solzhenitsyn included a small glossary explaining the most common terms and jargon. Sometimes these speech registers merge: for example, the slang “zek” is derived from the Soviet abbreviation “z/k” (“prisoner”). Some former camp inmates wrote to Solzhenitsyn that in their camps they always pronounced “zeka”, but after “One Day...” and “The Gulag Archipelago” Solzhenitsyn’s version (possibly occasionalism Occasionalism is a new word coined by a specific author. Unlike neologism, occasionalism is used only in the author’s work and does not go into wide use. ⁠ ) established itself in the language.

Every citizen of all two hundred million citizens of the Soviet Union must read this story and learn it by heart.
Anna Akhmatova

A separate layer of speech in “One Day...” is swearing, which shocked some readers, but met with understanding among camp inmates who knew that Solzhenitsyn had not exaggerated his colors here. When publishing, Solzhenitsyn agreed to resort to banknotes and euphemisms A word or expression that replaces a rude, uncomfortable statement. ⁠ : replaced the letter “x” with “f” (this is how the famous “fuyaslitse” and “fuyomnik” appeared, but Solzhenitsyn managed to defend the “laughs”), added an accent somewhere (“Stop, ... eat!”, “I won’t I can wear this shit with this!”). Swearing every time serves to express expression - a threat or “draining of the soul.” The protagonist’s speech is mostly free of swearing: the only euphemism is unclear, whether it was the author’s or Shukhov’s: “Shukhov quickly hid from Tatarin around the corner of the barracks: the second time you get caught, he’ll sneak in again.” It's funny that in the 1980s, "One Day..." was removed from American schools due to swearing. “I received indignant letters from my parents: how can you publish such an abomination!” - recalled Solzhenitsyn 32 Solzhenitsyn A.I. A calf butted an oak tree: Essays on literary life. M.: Consent, 1996. P. 54. ⁠ . At the same time, writers of uncensored literature, for example Vladimir Sorokin, whose “Day of the Oprichnik” was clearly influenced by Solzhenitsyn’s story, reproached him - and other Russian classics - for excessive modesty: “In Solzhenitsyn’s “Ivan Denisovich” we observe the life of prisoners, and - not a single swear word! Only - “butter-fuyaslitse”. The men in Tolstoy's War and Peace do not utter a single swear word. It's a shame!"

Camp drawings by artist Hulo Sooster. Sooster served time in Karlag from 1949 to 1956

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” - a story or a story?

Solzhenitsyn emphasized that his work was a story, but the editors of Novy Mir, obviously embarrassed by the volume of the text, suggested that the author publish it as a story. Solzhenitsyn, who did not think that publication was possible at all, agreed, which he later regretted: “I shouldn’t have given in. In our country, the boundaries between genres are being blurred and forms are being devalued. “Ivan Denisovich” is, of course, a story, albeit a big, loaded one.” He proved this by developing his own theory of prose genres: “I would single out a short story - easy to construct, clear in plot and thought. A story is what we most often try to call a novel: where there are several plot lines and even an almost obligatory length of time. And a novel (a vile word! Isn’t it possible otherwise?) differs from a story not so much in volume, and not so much in its length in time (it even became compressed and dynamic), but rather in the capture of many destinies, the horizon of view and the vertical thoughts" 32 Solzhenitsyn A.I. A calf butted an oak tree: Essays on literary life. M.: Consent, 1996. P. 28. ⁠ . By persistently calling “One Day...” a story, Solzhenitsyn clearly means the sketch style of his own writing; in his understanding, the content of the text matters for the genre name: one day, covering the characteristic details of the environment, is not material for a novel or story. Be that as it may, it is hardly possible to overcome the correctly noted tendency of “blurring” the boundaries between genres: despite the fact that the architecture of “Ivan Denisovich” is indeed more characteristic of the story, due to its volume one would like to call it something more.

Potter in Vorkutlag. Komi Republic, 1945

Laski Diffusion/Getty Images

What brings “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” closer to Soviet prose?

Of course, in terms of the time and place of writing and publication, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is Soviet prose. This question, however, is about something else: about the essence of “Soviet”.

Emigrant and foreign criticism, as a rule, read “One Day...” as anti-Soviet and anti-socialist realist work 34 Hayward M. Solzhenitsyn’s Place in Contemporary Soviet Literature // Slavic Review. 1964. Vol. 23. No. 3. Pp. 432-436. ⁠ . One of the most famous emigrant critics Roman Gul Roman Borisovich Gul (1896-1986) - critic, publicist. During the Civil War, he took part in the Ice Campaign of General Kornilov and fought in the army of Hetman Skoropadsky. Since 1920, Gul lived in Berlin: he published a literary supplement to the newspaper “Nakanune”, wrote novels about the Civil War, and collaborated with Soviet newspapers and publishing houses. In 1933, freed from a Nazi prison, he emigrated to France, where he wrote a book about his time in a German concentration camp. In 1950, Gul moved to New York and began working at the New Journal, which he later headed. Since 1978, he published the memoir trilogy “I Took Russia Away. Apology for emigration." ⁠ in 1963 he published an article “Solzhenitsyn and Socialist Realism” in the New Journal: “...The work of the Ryazan teacher Alexander Solzhenitsyn seems to cross out all socialist realism, that is, all Soviet literature. This story has nothing in common with her.” Gul suggested that Solzhenitsyn’s work, “bypassing Soviet literature... came straight out of pre-revolutionary literature. From the Silver Age. And this is her signaling meaning" 35 Gul R. B. A. Solzhenitsyn and socialist realism: “One day. Ivan Denisovich" // Gul R. B. Odvukon: Soviet and emigrant literature. New York: Most, 1973. P. 83. ⁠ . Gul brings together the fairy-tale, “folk” language of the story “not even with Gorky, Bunin, Kuprin, Andreev, Zaitsev,” but with Remizov and the eclectic set of “writers of the Remizov school”: Pilnyak, Zamyatin, Shishkov Vyacheslav Yakovlevich Shishkov (1873-1945) - writer, engineer. Since 1900, Shishkov conducted expeditionary studies of Siberian rivers. In 1915, Shishkov moved to Petrograd and, with the assistance of Gorky, published a collection of stories, “The Siberian Tale.” In 1923, “The Band,” a book about the Civil War, was published, and in 1933, “The Gloomy River,” a novel about life in Siberia at the turn of the century. For the last seven years of his life, Shishkov worked on the historical epic “Emelyan Pugachev”. ⁠ , Prishvin, Klychkov Sergei Antonovich Klychkov (1889-1937) - poet, writer, translator. In 1911, Klychkov’s first poetry collection, “Songs,” was published, and in 1914, the collection “The Hidden Garden.” In the 1920s, Klychkov became close to the “new peasant” poets: Nikolai Klyuev, Sergei Yesenin, with the latter he shared a room. Klychkov is the author of the novels “The Sugar German”, “Chertukhinsky Balakir”, “Prince of Peace”, and has been translating Georgian poetry and Kyrgyz epic. In the 1930s, Klychkov was branded as a “kulak poet,” and in 1937 he was shot on false charges. ⁠ . “The verbal fabric of Solzhenitsyn’s story is akin to Remizov’s in its love for words with ancient roots and for the folk pronunciation of many words”; like Remizov, “in Solzhenitsyn’s dictionary there is a very expressive fusion of archaism with ultra-Soviet colloquial speech, a mixture of fairy-tale with Soviet" 36 Gul R. B. A. Solzhenitsyn and socialist realism: “One day. Ivan Denisovich" // Gul R. B. Odvukon: Soviet and emigrant literature. New York: Most, 1973. pp. 87-89. ⁠ .

Solzhenitsyn himself wrote all his life about socialist realism with contempt, calling it “an oath of abstinence from truth" 37 Nicholson M. A. Solzhenitsyn as a “socialist realist” / author. lane from English B. A. Erkhova // Solzhenitsyn: Thinker, historian, artist. Western criticism: 1974-2008: Sat. Art. / comp. and ed. entry Art. E. E. Erickson, Jr.; comment O. B. Vasilevskaya. M.: Russian way, 2010. pp. 476-477. ⁠ . But he resolutely did not accept modernism or avant-gardeism, considering it a harbinger of “the most destructive physical revolution of the 20th century”; philologist Richard Tempest believes that “Solzhenitsyn learned to use modernist means to achieve anti-modernist goals" 38 Tempest R. Alexander Solzhenitsyn - (anti)modernist / trans. from English A. Skidana // New literary review. 2010. pp. 246-263. ⁠ .

Shukhov is a generalized character of the Russian common man: resilient, “evil-willed”, hardy, a jack of all trades, crafty - and kind
Korney Chukovsky

In turn, Soviet reviewers, when Solzhenitsyn was officially in favor, insisted on the completely Soviet and even “party” nature of the story, seeing in it almost the embodiment of a social order to expose Stalinism. Gul could be ironic about this, the Soviet reader could assume that “correct” reviews and prefaces are written to divert attention, but if “One Day...” was stylistically completely alien to Soviet literature, it would hardly have been published.

For example, due to the culmination of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” - the construction of a thermal power plant - many copies were broken. Some former prisoners saw falsehood here, while Varlam Shalamov considered Ivan Denisovich’s work zeal quite plausible (“Shukhov’s passion for work is subtly and correctly shown...<…>It is possible that this kind of passion for work saves people." And the critic Vladimir Lakshin, comparing “One Day...” with “unbearably boring” industrial novels, saw in this scene a purely literary and even didactic device - Solzhenitsyn managed not only to excitingly describe the work of a mason, but also to show the bitter irony of a historical paradox: “ When the picture of cruelly forced labor seems to be filled with the picture of free labor, labor driven by inner motivation, this makes one understand more deeply and sharply what people like our Ivan Denisovich are worth, and what a criminal absurdity it is to keep them away from their home, under the protection of machine guns. , behind the barbed wire" 39 Lakshin V. Ya. Ivan Denisovich, his friends and foes // Criticism of the 50-60s of the XX century / comp., preamble, notes. E. Yu. Skarlygina. M.: LLC “Agency “KRPA Olimp”, 2004. P. 143. ⁠ .

Lakshin subtly captures the kinship of the famous scene with the schematic climaxes of socialist realist novels, and the way in which Solzhenitsyn deviates from the canon. The fact is that both socialist realist standards and Solzhenitsyn’s realism are based on a certain invariant, originating in the Russian realistic tradition of the 19th century. It turns out that Solzhenitsyn is doing the same thing as official Soviet writers - only much better, more original (not to mention the context of the scene). American researcher Andrew Wachtel even believes that “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” “must be read as a socialist realist work (at least based on the understanding of socialist realism in 1962)”: “I in no way belittle Solzhenitsyn’s achievements by this...<...>he... took advantage of the most erased clichés of socialist realism and used them in a text that almost completely obscured its literary and cultural Denisovich" 41 Solzhenitsyn A.I. Journalism: In 3 volumes. Yaroslavl: Upper Volga, 1997. T. 3. P. 92-93. ⁠ . But in the text of “Archipelago” itself, Ivan Denisovich appears as a person who knows camp life well: the author enters into a dialogue with his hero. So, in the second volume, Solzhenitsyn invites him to tell him how to survive in a hard labor camp, “if they don’t hire him as a paramedic, or as an orderly, they won’t even give him a fake release for one day? If he has a lack of literacy and an excess of conscience, to become a moron in the zone? This is how, for example, Ivan Denisovich talks about “mostyrka” - that is, deliberately bringing oneself to the point of illnesses 42 Solzhenitsyn A.I. The GULAG Archipelago: In 3 volumes. M.: Center “New World”, 1990. T. 2. P. 145. ⁠ :

“It’s another thing - a bridge, to be injured so that you can live and remain disabled. As they say, a minute of patience is a year of edging. Break a leg, and then have it heal incorrectly. Drinking salty water makes you swell. Or smoking tea is against the heart. And drinking tobacco infusion is good for the lungs. You just have to do it in moderation so as not to overdo it and end up in the grave through disability.”

In the same recognizable colloquial, “fairy-tale” language, full of camp idioms, Ivan Denisovich talks about other ways to escape from murderous work - to get into the OP (in Solzhenitsyn - “recreational”, officially - “health center”) or to obtain activation - a petition for release for health. In addition, Ivan Denisovich was entrusted to talk about other details of camp life: “How tea in the camp is used instead of money... How they drink coffee - fifty grams per glass - and there are visions in my head,” and so on. Finally, it is his story in “Archipelago” that precedes the chapter on women in the camp: “And the best thing is not to have a partner, but a partner. A camp wife, a prisoner. As the saying goes - get married» 43 Solzhenitsyn A.I. The Gulag Archipelago: In 3 volumes. M.: Center “New World”, 1990. T. 2. P. 148. ⁠ .

In "Archipelago" Shukhov is not equal to Ivan Denisovich from the story: he does not think about the "mostyrka" and chifir, does not remember women. Shukhov's "Archipelago" is an even more collective image of a seasoned prisoner, preserving the speech manner of the earlier character.

Review letter; their correspondence continued for several years. “A story is like poetry—everything in it is perfect, everything is purposeful. Every line, every scene, every characteristic is so laconic, smart, subtle and deep that I think that “New World” from the very beginning of its existence has not published anything so integral, so powerful,” Shalamov wrote to Solzhenitsyn. —<…>Everything in the story is true.” Unlike many readers who did not know the camp, he praised Solzhenitsyn for his use of abuse (“camp life, camp language, camp thoughts are inconceivable without swearing, without swearing at the very last word”).

Like other former prisoners, Shalamov noted that Ivan Denisovich’s camp is “easy,” not quite real” (unlike Ust-Izhma, a real camp, which “makes its way in the story like white steam through the cracks of a cold barracks”): “ In the convict camp where Shukhov is sitting, he has a spoon, a spoon for a real camp is an extra tool. Both the soup and the porridge are of such a consistency that you could drink it over the side; there is a cat walking near the medical unit - incredible for a real camp - the cat would have been eaten long ago.” “There are no warriors in your camp! - he wrote to Solzhenitsyn. - Your camp without lice! The security service is not responsible for the plan and does not knock it out with gun butts.<…>Leave the bread at home! They eat with spoons! Where is this wonderful camp? At least I could sit there for a year in my own time.” All this does not mean that Shalamov accused Solzhenitsyn of fabricating or embellishing reality: Solzhenitsyn himself admitted in his response letter that his camp experience, compared to Shalamov’s, “was shorter and easier,” in addition, Solzhenitsyn from the very beginning was going to show “the camp is very prosperous and in very prosperous day."

Here's who is dying in the camp: who licks the bowls, who hopes at the medical unit, and who goes to knock on the godfather's door
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Shalamov saw the only falsehood of the story in the figure of captain Buinovsky. He believed that the typical figure of a debater who shouts to the convoy “You have no right” and the like was only in 1938: “Everyone who shouted like that was shot.” It seems implausible to Shalamov that the captain did not know about the reality of the camp: “Since 1937, for fourteen years, executions, repressions, arrests have been going on before his eyes, his comrades are taken, and they disappear forever. And the captain doesn’t even bother to think about it. He drives along the roads and sees camp guard towers everywhere. And he doesn’t bother to think about it. Finally, he passed the investigation, because he ended up in the camp after the investigation, and not before. And yet I didn’t think about anything. He could not see this under two conditions: either the cavorang spent fourteen years on a long voyage, somewhere on a submarine, without rising to the surface for fourteen years. Or I thoughtlessly signed up as a soldier for fourteen years, and when they took me, I felt bad.”

This remark rather reflects the worldview of Shalamov, who went through the most terrible camp conditions: people who retained some kind of well-being or doubts after the experience aroused his suspicion. Dmitry Bykov compares Shalamov with the prisoner of Auschwitz, the Polish writer Tadeusz Borovsky: “The same disbelief in man and the same refusal of any consolation - but Borovsky went further: he put every survivor under suspicion. If he survived, it means he betrayed someone or something gave up" 44 Bykov D. L. Soviet literature. Advanced course. M.: PROZAIK, 2015. P. 405-406. ⁠ .

In his first letter, Shalamov instructs Solzhenitsyn: “Remember, the most important thing: the camp is a negative school from the first to the last day for anyone.” Not only Shalamov’s correspondence with Solzhenitsyn, but, first of all, “Kolyma Tales” are capable of convincing anyone who thinks that “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” shows inhuman conditions: there can be much, much worse.

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Solzhenitsyn's story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was created in 1959. The author wrote it during a break between work on the novel “In the First Circle.” In just 40 days, Solzhenitsyn created One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Analysis of this work is the topic of this article.

Subject of the work

The reader of the story gets acquainted with the life in the camp zone of a Russian peasant. However, the theme of the work is not limited to camp life. In addition to the details of survival in the zone, “One Day...” contains details of life in the village, described through the prism of the hero’s consciousness. The story of Tyurin, the foreman, contains evidence of the consequences that collectivization led to in the country. In various disputes between camp intellectuals, various phenomena of Soviet art are discussed (the theatrical premiere of the film “John the Terrible” by S. Eisenstein). In connection with the fate of Shukhov's comrades in the camp, many details of the history of the Soviet period are mentioned.

The theme of the fate of Russia is the main theme of the work of such a writer as Solzhenitsyn. “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” the analysis of which interests us, is no exception. In it, local, private topics are integrated organically into this general problem. In this regard, the theme of the fate of art in a state with a totalitarian system is indicative. So, artists from the camp paint free paintings for the authorities. The art of the Soviet era, according to Solzhenitsyn, became part of the general apparatus of oppression. An episode of Shukhov’s reflections on village artisans producing dyed “carpets” supported the motif of the degradation of art.

Plot of the story

The plot of the story created by Solzhenitsyn (“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”) is chronicle. The analysis shows that although the plot is based on events lasting only one day, his memories allow him to present the pre-camp biography of the main character. Ivan Shukhov was born in 1911. He spent his pre-war years in the village of Temgenevo. His family includes two daughters (his only son died early). Shukhov has been at war since its first days. He was wounded and then captured, from where he managed to escape. In 1943, Shukhov was convicted of a fabricated case. He served 8 years at the time of the plot action. The action of the work takes place in Kazakhstan, in a convict camp. One of the January days of 1951 was described by Solzhenitsyn (“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”).

Analysis of the work's character system

Although the main part of the characters was depicted by the author with laconic means, Solzhenitsyn managed to achieve plastic expressiveness in their depiction. We observe the diversity of individuals, the richness of human types in the work “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” The heroes of the story are depicted succinctly, but at the same time remain in the reader’s memory for a long time. Sometimes a writer only needs one or two fragments, expressive sketches. Solzhenitsyn (photo of the author is presented below) is sensitive to the national, professional and class specifics of the human characters he created.

The relationships between the characters are subject to a strict camp hierarchy in the work One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. A brief summary of the entire prison life of the protagonist, presented in one day, allows us to conclude that there is an insurmountable gap between the camp administration and the prisoners. It is noteworthy that in this story the names and sometimes surnames of many guards and overseers are absent. The individuality of these characters is manifested only in forms of violence, as well as in the degree of ferocity. On the contrary, despite the depersonalizing number system, many of the camp inmates are present in the hero’s mind with names, and sometimes even patronymics. This suggests that they have retained their individuality. Although this evidence does not apply to the so-called informers, idiots and wicks described in the work “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. These heroes also have no names. In general, Solzhenitsyn talks about how the system unsuccessfully tries to turn people into parts of a totalitarian machine. Particularly important in this regard, in addition to the main character, are the images of Tyurin (the foreman), Pavlo (his assistant), Buinovsky (cavalier), the Baptist Alyoshka and the Latvian Kilgas.

Main character

In the work "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" the image of the main character is very remarkable. Solzhenitsyn made them an ordinary peasant, a Russian peasant. Although the circumstances of camp life are obviously “exceptional,” the writer deliberately emphasizes the outward inconspicuousness and “normality” of behavior in his hero. According to Solzhenitsyn, the fate of the country depends on the innate morality and natural resilience of the common man. The main thing in Shukhov is his indestructible inner dignity. Ivan Denisovich, even while serving his more educated fellow prisoners, does not change his age-old peasant habits and does not let himself down.

His working skill is very important in the characterization of this hero: Shukhov managed to acquire his own convenient trowel; In order to cast spoons later, he hides the pieces; he sharpened a folding knife and skillfully hid it. Further, the seemingly insignificant details of the existence of this hero, his demeanor, the peculiar peasant etiquette, everyday habits - all this, in the context of the story, takes on the meaning of values that allow the human element in a person to be preserved in difficult conditions. Shukhov, for example, always wakes up 1.5 hours before the divorce. He belongs to himself in these morning minutes. This time of actual freedom is important for the hero also because he can earn extra money.

"Cinematic" compositional techniques

One day in this work contains a cluster of a person’s fate, a squeeze out of his life. It is impossible not to notice the high degree of detail: each fact in the narrative is divided into small components, most of which are presented in close-up. The author uses “cinematic” He scrupulously, incredibly carefully watches how, before leaving the barracks, his hero gets dressed or eats to the skeleton a small fish caught in the soup. Even such a seemingly insignificant gastronomic detail, like fish eyes swimming in a stew, is given a special “frame” in the story. You will be convinced of this by reading the work “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” The contents of the chapters of this story, with careful reading, allows you to find many similar examples.

The concept of "deadline"

The important thing is that in the text the works come closer to each other, sometimes becoming almost synonymous, such concepts as “day” and “life”. Such a rapprochement is carried out by the author through the concept of “deadline,” which is universal in the narrative. The term is the punishment meted out to the prisoner, and at the same time the internal routine of life in prison. Moreover, and most importantly, it is synonymous with a person’s fate and a reminder of the last, most important period of his life. Temporal designations thereby acquire a deep moral and psychological coloring in the work.

Scene

The location of the action is also very significant. The camp space is hostile to prisoners; the open areas of the zone are especially dangerous. The prisoners are in a hurry to run between rooms as quickly as possible. They are afraid of being caught in this place and are in a hurry to duck under the protection of the barracks. In contrast to the heroes of Russian literature who love the distance and expanse, Shukhov and other prisoners dream of a cramped shelter. For them, the barracks turns out to be home.

What was one day like for Ivan Denisovich?

The characteristics of one day spent by Shukhov are directly given by the author in the work. Solzhenitsyn showed that this day in the life of the protagonist turned out to be successful. Discussing him, the author notes that the hero was not put in a punishment cell, the brigade was not sent out to Sotsgorodok, he made porridge for lunch, the foreman closed the interest well. Shukhov laid the wall cheerfully, didn’t get caught with a hacksaw, and in the evening he worked at Caesar’s and bought some tobacco. The main character also did not get sick. An unclouded, “almost happy” day passed. This is the case in the work of its main events. The author's final words sound just as epically calm. He says that there were 3653 such days in Shukhov’s term - 3 extra days were added due to

Solzhenitsyn refrains from openly displaying emotions and loud words: it is enough for the reader to have corresponding feelings. And this is guaranteed by the harmonious structure of the story about the power of man and the power of life.

Conclusion

Thus, in the work “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” problems were posed that were very relevant for that time. Solzhenitsyn recreates the main features of the era when the people were doomed to incredible hardships and torments. The history of this phenomenon begins not with 1937, marked by the first violations of the norms of party and state life, but much earlier, with the beginning of the existence of the totalitarian regime in Russia. The work, therefore, presents a cluster of destinies of many Soviet people who were forced to pay through years of torment, humiliation, and camps for their devoted and honest service. The author of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” raised these problems so that the reader would think about the essence of the phenomena observed in society and draw some conclusions for himself. The writer does not moralize, does not call for something, he only describes reality. The work only benefits from this.

November 18 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” - the most famous, and, in the opinion of many, the best literary work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

The fate of the story reflected Russian history. During the Khrushchev Thaw, it was published and raised on the shield in the USSR, under Brezhnev it was banned and removed from libraries, and in the 1990s it was included in the compulsory school curriculum for literature.

On November 6, on the eve of the anniversary, Vladimir Putin received the writer’s widow, Natalya Solzhenitsyn, who shared her concern about the reduction in the number of hours allocated in the school curriculum for the study of literature.

The TV report included Solzhenitsyn’s phrases that “without knowledge of history and literature, a person walks like a lame” and “unconsciousness is a disease of a weak person, and a weak society, and a weak state.” The President promised to "talk to the Ministry of Education."

Solzhenitsyn is considered a literary classic, but was, rather, a great historian.

The main work that brought him worldwide fame, “The Gulag Archipelago,” is not a novel, but a fundamental scientific research, and even carried out at the risk of his life. Most of his literary works today, to put it mildly, are not read.

But the first attempt at writing, “One Day,” turned out to be extremely successful. This story amazes with its colorful characters and rich language and is broken down into quotes.

The author and his hero

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a mathematics teacher by training, an artillery captain in the war, was arrested in East Prussia by SMERSH in February 1945. The censor illustrated his letter to a friend who fought on another front, containing some critical remark about the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

The future writer, in his words, who dreamed of literature since his school years, after interrogations at Lubyanka received eight years in prison, which he served first in the Moscow scientific and design "sharashka", then in one of the camps in the Ekibastuz region of Kazakhstan. His term ended in one month with the death of Stalin.

While living in a settlement in Kazakhstan, Solzhenitsyn experienced severe psychological trauma: he was diagnosed with cancer. It is not known for sure whether there was a medical error or a rare case of healing from a fatal illness.

There is a belief that someone who is buried alive then lives a long time. Solzhenitsyn died at the age of 89, and not from oncology, but from heart failure.

Image caption On the eve of the anniversary, Vladimir Putin met with the writer’s widow

The idea for “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was born in the camp in the winter of 1950-1951 and was realized in Ryazan, where the author settled in June 1957 after returning from exile and worked as a school teacher. Solzhenitsyn began writing on May 18 and finished on June 30, 1959.

“On one long winter camp day I was carrying a stretcher with a partner and thought: how to describe our entire camp life? In fact, it is enough to describe just one day in detail, in the smallest detail, moreover, the day of the simplest worker. And there is no need to even force it some kind of horrors, it doesn’t need to be some kind of special day, but an ordinary one, this is the very day from which years are formed. I conceived this way, and this plan remained in my mind, for nine years I have not been to it touched it and only nine years later sat down and wrote,” he later recalled.

“I didn’t write it for long at all,” admitted Solzhenitsyn. “It always turns out like this if you write from a dense life, the life of which you know too much, and it’s not that you don’t have to guess at something, try to understand something, but only you fight off excess material, just so that the excess does not fit, but to accommodate the most necessary things.”

In an interview in 1976, Solzhenitsyn returned to this idea: “It is enough to collect everything in one day, as if in fragments; it is enough to describe only one day of one average, unremarkable person from morning to evening. And everything will be.”

Solzhenitsyn made the main character the Russian peasant, soldier and prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.

The day from getting up to lights out turned out well for him, and “Shukhov fell asleep, completely satisfied.” The tragedy lay in the last meager phrase: “There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his term from bell to bell. Due to leap years, three extra days were added...”

Tvardovsky and Khrushchev

Image caption Alexander Tvardovsky was a poet and citizen

The story owed its meeting with readers to two people: the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir, Alexander Tvardovsky, and Nikita Khrushchev.

A Soviet classic, order bearer and laureate, Tvardovsky was the son of a dispossessed Smolensk peasant and did not forget anything, which he proved with the posthumously published poem “By the Right of Memory.”

Even at the front, Solzhenitsyn felt a kindred spirit in the author of Terkin. In his autobiographical book “The Calf Butted an Oak Tree,” he noted “the peasant delicacy that allowed him to stop before any lie at the last millimeter, never crossed this millimeter, nowhere! - that’s why the miracle happened!”

“But behind the poetic significance of Tvardovsky today it is not that he is forgotten, but to many it seems that his significance as the editor of the best literary and social magazine of the last century is no longer so significant. Of course, the significance of “New World” is broader than Solzhenitsyn’s publication alone. It was a powerful educational magazine, "discovered for us military prose, "hillbillies", printing the best possible examples of Western literature. It was a magazine of new criticism, which, unlike the criticism of the 30s, did not separate the "sheep" from the "goats", but spoke about life and literature" , writes modern literary historian Pavel Basinsky.

“Two magazines in the history of Russia bear the author’s name - “Sovremennik” by Nekrasov and “New World” by Tvardovsky. Both had both a brilliant and bitterly sad fate. Both were beloved, the most precious brainchild of two great and very related Russian poets, and both became their personal tragedies, the most severe defeats in life, which undoubtedly brought their death closer,” he points out.

On November 10, 1961, Solzhenitsyn, through Raisa Orlova, the wife of his cellmate in the sharashka, Lev Kopelev, handed over the manuscript of One Day to the editor of the prose department of the New World, Anna Berzer. He did not indicate his name; on the advice of Kopelev, Berzer wrote on the first page: “A. Ryazansky.”

On December 8, Berzer showed the manuscript to Tvardovsky, who had returned from vacation, with the words: “The camp through the eyes of a peasant, a very popular thing.”

Tvardovsky read the story on the night of December 8–9. According to him, he was lying in bed, but was so shocked that he got up, put on his suit and continued reading while sitting.

“The strongest impression of the last days is the manuscript of A. Ryazansky (Solzhenitsyn),” he wrote in his diary.

Every citizen of all two hundred million citizens of the Soviet Union must read this story Anna Akhmatova

On December 11, Tvardovsky telegraphed Solzhenitsyn, asking him to come to Moscow as soon as possible.

The very next day the author’s first meeting with the editors of Novy Mir took place. Solzhenitsyn considered his work a story and initially entitled it “Shch-854. One day of one prisoner.” “Novomirtsy” proposed to slightly change the title and “for weight” to consider the story a story.

Tvardovsky showed the manuscript to Chukovsky, Marshak, Fedin, Paustovsky, and Ehrenburg.

Korney Chukovsky called his review “A Literary Miracle”: “Shukhov is a generalized character of the Russian common man: resilient, “evil-willed,” hardy, a jack of all trades, crafty - and kind. Brother of Vasily Terkin. The story is written in HIS language, full of humor, colorful and apt."

Tvardovsky understood the censorship impediment of “Ivan Denisovich,” but on the eve of the XXII Congress of the CPSU, at which Khrushchev was preparing to make a decision to remove Stalin from the Mausoleum, he felt that the moment had come.

On August 6, he handed over the manuscript and a covering letter to Khrushchev’s assistant Vladimir Lebedev, which contained the words: “The author’s name has not been known to anyone until now, but tomorrow it may become one of the remarkable names in our literature. If you find the opportunity to pay attention to this manuscript, I I will be happy as if it were my own work."

According to some reports, Tvardovsky also handed a copy to Khrushchev’s son-in-law Alexei Adzhubey.

On September 15, Lebedev informed Tvardovsky that Khrushchev had read the story, approved it, and ordered that 23 copies of the manuscript be submitted to the Central Committee for all members of the leadership.

Soon, some regular party literary meeting took place, one of the participants of which stated that he did not understand how someone could like a thing like “Ivan Denisovich”.

“I know at least one person who read it and liked it,” Tvardovsky replied.

If Tvardovsky had not been the editor-in-chief of the magazine, this story would not have been published. And if Khrushchev had not been there at that moment, it would not have been published either. The publication of my story in the Soviet Union, in 1962, was like a phenomenon against physical laws. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The issue of publication was discussed, neither more nor less, at the Presidium of the Central Committee. On October 12, five days before the opening of the XXII Congress, the decision was made.

On November 18, the issue of Novy Mir with the story was printed and began to be distributed throughout the country. The circulation was 96,900 copies, but, at the direction of Khrushchev, it was increased by 25 thousand. A few months later, the story was republished by Roman Newspaper (700 thousand copies) and as a separate book.

In an interview with the BBC on the 20th anniversary of the release of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn recalled:

“It is absolutely clear: if it were not for Tvardovsky as the editor-in-chief of the magazine, no, this story would not have been published. But I will add. And if Khrushchev had not been there at that moment, it would not have been published either. More: if Khrushchev had been in "This moment had not attacked Stalin one more time - it would not have been published either. The publication of my story in the Soviet Union, in 1962, was like a phenomenon against physical laws."

Solzhenitsyn considered it a great victory that his story was published for the first time in the USSR, and not in the West.

“You can see from the reaction of Western socialists: if it had been published in the West, these same socialists would have said: it’s all a lie, none of this happened. It was only because everyone lost their tongues that it was published with the permission of the Central Committee in Moscow, this was shocking,” - he told the BBC.

The editors and censors made a number of comments, some of which the author agreed with.

“The funniest thing for me, a Stalin hater, is that at least once it was necessary to name Stalin as the culprit of the disaster. And indeed, he was never mentioned by anyone in the story! This is not accidental, of course, it happened to me: I saw the Soviet regime, and not Stalin is alone. I made this concession: I mentioned the “mustachioed old man” once,” he recalled.

Unofficially, Solzhenitsyn was told that the story would have been much better if he had made his Shukhov not an innocently injured collective farmer, but an innocently injured regional committee secretary.

“Ivan Denisovich” was also criticized from opposite positions. Varlam Shalamov believed that Solzhenitsyn embellished reality to please the censors, and was especially indignant at the implausible, in his opinion, episode in which Shukhov experiences joy from his forced labor.

Solzhenitsyn immediately became a celebrity.

You can live “better and more fun” when conditional “prisoners” work for you. But when the whole country saw this “prisoner” in the person of Ivan Denisovich, it sobered up and realized: you can’t live like that! Pavel Basinsky, literary historian

“From all over Russia, letters to me exploded, and in the letters people wrote what they had experienced, what they had. Or they insisted on meeting me and telling me, and I began to meet. Everyone asked me, the author of the first camp story, to write more, still describe this whole camp world. They did not know my plan and did not know how much I had already written, but they carried and brought me the missing material. So I collected indescribable material that cannot be collected in the Soviet Union - only thanks to “Ivan Denisovich "So it became a pedestal for the Gulag Archipelago," he recalled.

Some wrote on the envelopes: “Moscow, New World magazine, to Ivan Denisovich,” and the mail arrived.

On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the publication of the story, it was republished in the form of a two-volume book: the first book included herself, and the second - letters that had lain under wraps for half a century in the archives of the New World.

“The publication in Sovremennik of Turgenev’s Notes of a Hunter objectively brought the abolition of serfdom closer. Because you can still sell conditional “serfs,” but selling Khor and Kalinich like pigs, you see, is no longer possible. You can live “better and more fun” when conditional "prisoners" work for you. But when the whole country saw this "prisoner" in the person of Ivan Denisovich, it sobered up and realized: you can’t live like that!” - wrote Pavel Basinsky.

The editors nominated One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich for the Lenin Prize. The “literary generals” were uncomfortable criticizing the content of a book that Khrushchev himself approved, and they found fault with the fact that previously only novels, and not “works of small forms,” were awarded the highest award.

Butting with oak

After Khrushchev's removal, other winds began to blow.

On February 5, 1966, the party boss of Uzbekistan, Sharaf Rashidov, sent a note to the Politburo in which he specifically mentioned Solzhenitsyn, calling him a “slanderer” and “an enemy of our wonderful reality.”

“In fact, comrades, no one has yet taken a party position regarding Ivan Denisovich’s book,” Brezhnev was indignant, confusing the hero and the author.

“When Khrushchev was in charge, enormous harm was done to us in our ideological work. We corrupted the intelligentsia. And how much we argued and how much we talked about Ivan Denisovich! But he supported all this camp literature!” - said Mikhail Suslov.

Solzhenitsyn was made to understand that he could fit into the system if he would forget about the “topic of repression” and start writing about village life or something else. But he continued to secretly collect materials for the Gulag Archipelago, meeting with approximately three hundred former camp inmates and exiles over several years.

Even dissidents at that time demanded respect for human rights, but did not attack the Soviet regime as such. The protests were held under the slogan: “Respect your constitution!”

Solzhenitsyn was the first, indirectly in “One Day” and directly in “Archipelago,” to say that it was not just Stalin that was at issue, that the communist regime was criminal from the moment it arose and remains so, that, by and large, the “Leninist guard” had suffered historical justice.

Solzhenitsyn had his own destiny, he did not want, and objectively could not, sacrifice the “Archipelago” even for the sake of Tvardovsky Pavel Basinsky

According to some researchers, Solzhenitsyn single-handedly won a historic victory over the all-powerful Soviet state. There were many supporters in the party leadership of an official review of the decisions of the 20th Congress and the rehabilitation of Stalin, but the publication of “Archipelago” in Paris in December 1973 became such a bomb that they preferred to leave the issue in limbo.

In the USSR, the campaign against Solzhenitsyn acquired an unprecedented character. Since the time of Trotsky, the propaganda machine has not fought on such a scale against one person. Every day, newspapers published letters from “Soviet writers” and “ordinary workers” with the leitmotif: “I have not read this book, but I am deeply outraged by it!”

Using quotes taken out of context, Solzhenitsyn was accused of sympathizing with Nazism and labeled him a “literary Vlasovite.”

For many citizens, this had the opposite effect to what was desired: it means that the Soviet government has become different if a person, while in Moscow, openly declares that he does not like it, and is still alive!

A joke was born: in the encyclopedia of the future, in the article “Brezhnev” it will be written: “a political figure of the era of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov.”

The question of what to do with an uncontrollable writer was discussed for a long time at the highest level. Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin demanded that he be given a prison sentence. In a note to Brezhnev, Minister of Internal Affairs Nikolai Shchelokov called for “not executing enemies, but strangling them in our arms.” In the end, the point of view of KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov prevailed.

On February 12, 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, and the next day he was deprived of citizenship and “expelled from the USSR” (put on a plane flying to Germany).

In the entire history of the Soviet Union, this exotic punishment was applied only twice: to Solzhenitsyn and Trotsky.

Contrary to popular belief, Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize in Literature not for The Gulag Archipelago, but earlier, in 1970, with the wording: “For the moral strength with which he followed the immutable traditions of Russian literature.”

Soon after this, all editions of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich were removed from libraries. The surviving copies cost 200 rubles on the black market - one and a half monthly salaries of the average Soviet worker.

On the day of Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion, all his works were officially banned by a special order from Glavlit. The ban was lifted on December 31, 1988.

Suslov spoke in the spirit that if he were removed from his job immediately, “he will now leave as a hero.”

They began to create unbearable conditions for Tvardovsky and harass him with nagging. Army libraries stopped checking out “New World” - this was a signal clear to everyone.

The head of the cultural department of the Central Committee, Vasily Shauro, told the chairman of the board of the Writers' Union, Georgy Markov: “All conversations with him and your actions should push Tvardovsky to leave the magazine.”

Tvardovsky turned to Brezhnev, Minister of Culture Pyotr Demichev and other superiors many times, asking for clarification of his position, but received evasive answers.

In February 1970, the exhausted Tvardovsky resigned as editor. Soon after, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. “The New World team was dispersed after his departure.

Solzhenitsyn was subsequently reproached for the fact that, by refusing to compromise, he “set up” Tvardovsky and Novy Mir, which had done so much for him.

According to Pavel Basinsky, “Solzhenitsyn had his own destiny; he did not want, and objectively could not, sacrifice the Archipelago even for the sake of Tvardovsky.”

In turn, Solzhenitsyn, in his book “The Calf Butted an Oak,” published in 1975 in the West, paid tribute to Tvardovsky, but criticized the rest of the “Novomirtsy” for the fact that, as he believed, they “did not put up courageous resistance and did not make personal sacrifices.” ".

According to him, “the death of the New World was devoid of beauty, since it did not contain even the smallest attempt at public struggle.”

“The ungenerosity of his memory stunned me,” Tvardovsky’s former deputy, Vladimir Lakshin, wrote in an article sent abroad.

Eternal dissident

While in the USSR, Solzhenitsyn, in an interview with the American television channel CBS, called modern history “the story of America’s selfless generosity and the ingratitude of the whole world.”

However, having settled in Vermont, he did not sing the praises of American civilization and democracy, but began to criticize them for materialism, lack of spirituality and weakness in the fight against communism.

“One of your leading newspapers, after the end of Vietnam, ran a full page headline: “Blessed Silence.” I would not wish such blessed silence on an enemy! We are already hearing voices: “Give up Korea, and we will live quietly.” Give up Portugal, give up Israel , give Taiwan, give ten more African countries, just give us the opportunity to live in peace. Give us the opportunity to drive in our wide cars on our beautiful roads. Give us the opportunity to play tennis and golf in peace. Let us calmly mix cocktails, as we are used to. Let us see on every page of the magazine a smile with open teeth and a glass,” he said in one public speech.

As a result, many in the West did not completely lose interest in Solzhenitsyn, but began to treat him as an eccentric with an old-fashioned beard and overly radical views.

After August 1991, the majority of political emigrants of the Soviet period welcomed the changes in Russia and began to willingly come to Moscow, but preferred to live in the comfortable, stable West.

Image caption Solzhenitsyn at the Duma rostrum (November 1994)

Solzhenitsyn, one of the few, returned to his homeland.

He framed his visit, in the words of ironic journalists, as the appearance of Christ to the people: he flew to Vladivostok and traveled across the country by train, meeting with citizens in every city.

Without broadcast and order

The hope of becoming a national prophet like Leo Tolstoy did not come true. The Russians were concerned with current problems, and not with global issues of existence. A society that had enjoyed information freedom and pluralism of opinions was not inclined to accept anyone as an indisputable authority. They listened to Solzhenitsyn respectfully, but were in no hurry to follow his instructions.

The author's program on Russian television was soon closed: according to Solzhenitsyn, guided by political considerations; according to television people, because it began to repeat itself and lost ratings.

The writer began to criticize the Russian order in the same way as he criticized the Soviet and American ones, and refused to accept the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called, which Boris Yeltsin awarded him.

During his lifetime, Solzhenitsyn was reproached for his messianism, ponderous seriousness, inflated claims, arrogant moralizing, ambiguous attitude towards democracy and individualism, and passion for archaic ideas of monarchy and community. But, in the end, every person, and even more so on Solzhenitsyn’s scale, has the right to his own non-trivial opinion.

All this became a thing of the past with him. There are books left.

“And it doesn’t matter at all whether The Gulag Archipelago will be included in the compulsory school curriculum or not,” political observer Andrei Kolesnikov wrote on the eve of the anniversary. “Because the absolutely free Alexander Solzhenitsyn has already entered an optional eternity anyway.”

One day of Ivan Denisovich content. Solzhenitsyn “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” - the history of creation and publication. Analysis of the work's character system

Picture or drawing One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich

Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary

Morning

Roll call, clothing set incident (brief retelling)

Letter from Shukhov's wife

Reflection on how Ivan Denisovich ended up in prison

Dinner

Social types, description of work and camp life

Evening

comments: Lev Oborin

bibliography

Subject of the work

Plot of the story

Analysis of the work's character system

Main character

"Cinematic" compositional techniques

The concept of "deadline"

Scene

What was one day like for Ivan Denisovich?

Conclusion

The author and his hero

Tvardovsky and Khrushchev

Butting with oak

Eternal dissident