Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich" follows a prisoner through 24 hours of his lengthy incarceration. When first published in 1962, it brought to the world's attention the horrors of life for political dissidents in the Russian labour camps.
The hammer banged reveille on the rail outside camp HQ at five o'clock as always. Time to get up. The ragged noise was muffled by ice two fingers thick on the windows and soon died away. Too cold for the warder to go on hammering.
The jangling stopped. Outside it was still as dark as when Shukhov had got up in the night to use the bucket – pitch black, except for three yellow lights visible from the window, two in the perimeter, one inside the camp.
For some reason they were slow unlocking the hut, and he couldn't hear the usual sound of the orderlies mounting the slop tub on poles to carry it out.
Shukhov never overslept. He was always up at the call. That way he had an hour and a half all to himself before work parade – time for a man who knew his way around to earn a bit on the side. He could stitch covers for somebody's mittens from a piece of old lining. Take some rich foreman his felt boots while he was still in his bunk (save him hopping around barefoot, fishing them out of the heap after drying). Rush around the store rooms looking for odd jobs – sweeping up or running errands. Go to the mess to stack bowls and carry them to the washers-up. You'd get something to eat, but there were too many volunteers, swarms of them. And the worst of it was that if there was anything left in a bowl you couldn't help licking it. Shukhov never for a moment forgot what his first foreman Kuzyomion had told him. An old campwolf, twelve years inside by 1943. One day round the campfire in a forest clearing he told the reinforcement fresh from the front: "It's the law of the taiga here lads. But a man can live here, just like anywhere else. Know who pegs out first? The guy who licks out bowls, puts his faith in the sick-bay, or squeals to godfather.*"
He was stretching it a bit here, of course. A stoolie will always get by, whoever else bleeds for him.
Shukhov always got up at once. Not today though. Hadn't felt right since the night before – had the shivers, and some sort of ache. And hadn't really got warm all night. In his sleep he kept fancying he was seriously ill, then feeling a bit better. Kept hoping morning would never come.
But it arrived on time.
Some hope of getting warm with a thick scab of ice on the windows, and white cobwebs of hoar frost where the walks of the huge hut met the ceiling.
Shukhov still didn't get up. He lay on top on a four-man bunk, with his blanket and jacket over his head, and both feet squeezed into one turned-sleeve of his jerkin. He couldn't see anything but he knew from the sounds just what was going on in the hut and in his own gang's corner. He heard the orderlies trudging heavily down the corridor with the tub that held eight pails of slops. Light work for the unfit, they call it, but just try getting the thing out without spilling it! And that bump means Gang 75's felt boots are back from the drying room. And here come ours – today's our turn to get our boots dried out. The foreman and his deputy pulled their boots on in silence except for the bunk creaking under them. Now the deputy would be off to the bread-cutting room, and the foreman to see the work-assigners at the HQ.
He did that every day, but today was different. Shukhov remembered. A fateful day for Gang 104: would they or wouldn't they be shunted from the workshops they'd been building to a new site, that so-called "Sotsgorodok"**. This Sotsgorodok was a bare field knee-deep in snow, and for a start you'd be digging holes, knocking in fence posts and stringing barbed wire around them to stop your-self running away. After that – get building.
You could count on a month with nowhere to go for a warm, not so much as a dog kennel. You wouldn't even be able to light a fire out in the open – where would the fuel come from? Your only hope would be to dig, dig for all you were worth.
The foreman went off to try and fix it, looking anxious. Maybe he can get some gang less quick off the mark dumped out there? You could never do a deal empty-handed, of course. Have to slip the senior work-assigner half a kilo of fatback. Maybe a kilo, even.
Might as well give it a try – wander over to the sickbay and wangle a day off. Every bone in my body is aching.
*Political officer in charge of the Informers' network
** Socialist settlement
Excerpt from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H T Willetts. Translation copyright (c) 1991 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. and William Collins & Son Co., Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/an-excerpt-from-alexander-solzhenitsyns-one-day-in-the-life-of-ivan-denisovich-885146.html
In the dark ages, in the crawling times when the streets were covered with a dank moss, when strings of the dark moulding matter reached down from the buildings as if from dark Florida swamp, when the cobble stone walks were barely visible in the thick mist. He was alone, always alone. The cold was creeping into his very bones, and he was frightened, of that he could easily admit. There were many strangers in the march. He could hear the clatter of hooves even now. What ancestor had these powerful experiences? So powerful they were printed on a 21st century soul, part of a race memory he could never understand, the very difficult past.
IN a good time, in a time when the spring shone and there was sunlight on the meadows, that life of a former warrior had been idyllic, playing with the other children, falling in love. But history was not going to let him rest. We were the ancestors of Europeans. Their lives played out in our blood, hundreds of years later on the opposite side of the planet. Their race memories mingled with others, from an ancient land and an ancient people, barbaric, simple, noble, despite all the romanticisation and rewriting of history, harsh and difficult and brutal.
Now we lived in a time of bombardment, of other people's lives, of vast amounts of information. No one could make a break through. No one could stand out. He could feel him breathing, that handsome face, that gorgeous body. And he clustered into one, and denied he was different, pretended these populated waking dreams were normal, not messages from others who had gone before. It wasn't exactly clairvoyance. His picture driven world was full of personalities. He was astonished at the depth of it. He had no one to explain it to.
The origins of the impulse he would never understand. His first scribblings, painted across an astonishing landscape, were gloomy and introspective, charged with religious imagery. His parents would beat him when he said he did not want to go to church, and so he learnt to remain silent. To feel was to be hurt. To speak was to be ridiculed, or worse, hurt. The belt that snaked out at him through his childhood continued to snake out at him in later life. He would cringe for no reason. He would run crying into the shadows, and wait for the pain to pass.
All of this, all of these terrible experiences, were meant to be leading to something. That was why the ancestors wanted to speak. Warning of danger. Warning of harsh times to come. Warning to prepare, not for global warming and the apocalyptic provisions fashionable for the moment, but a deep and abiding depression, of roving gangs and chaos on the streets, of ethnic cashes and blood on the street, burning houses, of a time when civilisation had collapsed.
There had been so much promise. People had believed society was entering the sunny uplands, that technology would save them, that the redistribution of wealth would make a difference, would take them forth into a nobler, more equal society. It did nothing of the kind. It perpetuated poverty and dependence, and whole swathes of suburbs were full of people who did not work, who spent their lives bonging on and arguing with their neighbours, in fruitless pursuits. As a warrior from the past, his instincts told him all was not well. He was preparing, quietly but diligently, for what had always been labelled "the end time". He was building his own safe haven; and it was the most sensible thing he had ever done.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/08/05/solzhenitsyn-forbes-interview-oped-cx_pm_0804russia.html
The world has been paying its last respects to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian who exposed the horror of the Soviet prison labor camps and gave new meaning to the word "gulag."
Solzhenitsyn, who died Aug. 3 of heart failure at age 89 in Moscow, spent eight years in those camps. That experience was the basis of his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which was published in 1962 during the brief post-Stalin thaw.
Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 and three years later published his historical masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, which led to his expulsion and 20 years in exile. He returned to his beloved Russia only in 1994, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Forbes magazine spoke to the reclusive Solzhenitsyn in his Vermont home shortly before returning. We republish the interview, conducted by the late Paul Klebnikov, and Klebnikov's assessment of Solzhenitsyn's work in memory of one of the 20th century's towering literary figures, whom many Russians regard as the conscience of their country.
Klebnikov's interview follows:
The home of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in Cavendish, Vt., is strewn with packing trunks. After 20 years, the reclusive Russian sage is preparing to go home, thus ending the involuntary exile imposed upon him by a now vanished communist government. But before returning to his homeland, the author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich agreed to give this magazine one of his rare interviews.
For Americans, many of whom still tend to regard Russia through a Cold War-distorting lens, Solzhenitsyn's passionate defense of Russia makes moving reading.
He ends the interview on a somewhat cryptic note, saying that one day the U.S. will have serious need of Russia as an ally against a threat he refused to name. What threat? On other occasions, Solzhenitsyn has warned of an expansionist China, about resurgent Islam and other dangers from the so-called Third World.
Forbes: Tension is mounting between Russia and the now independent Ukraine, with the West strongly backing Ukrainian territorial integrity. Henry Kissinger argues that Russia will always threaten the interests of the West, no matter what kind of government it has.
Solzhenitsyn: Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, [historian] Richard Pipes and many other American politicians and publicists are frozen in a mode of thought they developed a long time ago. With unchanging blindness and stubbornness they keep repeating and repeating this theory about the supposed age-old aggressiveness of Russia, without taking into consideration today's reality.
Well, what about Ukraine? Hasn't Russia made threats toward several of the former U.S.S.R. member states?
Imagine that one not very fine day two or three of your states in the Southwest, in the space of 24 hours, declare themselves independent of the U.S. They declare themselves a fully sovereign nation, decreeing that Spanish will be the only language. All English-speaking residents, even if their ancestors have lived there for 200 years, have to take a test in the Spanish language within one or two years and swear allegiance to the new nation. Otherwise they will not receive citizenship and be deprived of civic, property and employment rights.
What would be the reaction of the United States? I have no doubt that it would be immediate military intervention.
But today Russia faces precisely this scenario. In 24 hours she lost eight to 10 purely Russian provinces, 25 million ethnic Russians who have ended up in this very way--as "undesirable aliens." In places where their fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers have lived since way back--even from the 17th century--they face persecution in their jobs and the suppression of their culture, education and language.
Meanwhile, in Central Asia, those wishing to leave are not permitted to take even their personal property. The authorities tell them, "There is no such concept as 'personal property'!"
And in this situation "imperialist Russia" has not made a single forceful move to rectify this monstrous mess. Without a murmur she has given away 25 million of her compatriots--the largest diaspora in the world!
You see Russia as the victim of aggression, not as the aggressor.
Who can find in world history another such example of peaceful conduct? And if Russia keeps the peace in the single most vital question that concerns her, why should one expect her to be aggressive in secondary issues?
With Russia in chaos, it does sound a bit far-fetched to see her as an aggressor.
Russia today is terribly sick. Her people are sick to the point of total exhaustion. But even so, have a conscience and don't demand that--just to please America--Russia throw away the last vestiges of her concern for her security and her unprecedented collapse. After all, this concern in no way threatens the United States.
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11875339
From the archive
One black day in the life of Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Nov 11th 1969
Nobody bothers to find out whether Graham Greene, Jean-Paul Sartre or Alberto Moravia are members of any kind of writers' association. In the Soviet Union it is different. This explains the significance of what has now happened to Russia's most important and powerful writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. On Wednesday it was officially confirmed that he had been expelled from the Writers' Union. On November 4th he was expelled from his local branch at Ryazan, at a meeting which he himself attended. Two days later the decision was confirmed by the board of the Russian writers' union in Moscow. Solzhenitsyn himself was not then present; Alexander Tvardovsky, editor of the liberal journal Novy Mir, is said to have argued in his favour.
In the Soviet Union, membership of the writers' union is indispensable if a writer is to get his work published. If he does not belong, his position is comparable to that of a worker in the west who is deprived of his union card in an industry where there is a closed shop. Until the late 1920s writers of various points of view were allowed to express their views in the Soviet Union. Between 1928 and 1932 the literary scene was dominated by a group of militant Russians. So when a comprehensive union of Soviet writers was created in 1932, this was at first greeted as a liberal move. In fact, during Stalin's period, it became an instrument for party control over the entire output of Soviet writers.
The writers' union is a powerful body. It has several thousand members. It runs a newspaper, a publishing house and several literary magazines. It gets money not just from membership dues but also from a percentage on books published, plays performed and so on. It owns houses in Moscow as well as in the country. It does not act simply as a friendly society providing old-age pensions and health insurance for its members. It gives a writer who is not in trouble many advantages that his western colleagues might envy. It can give him accommodation in a rest-house where he can work in peace. It enables him to make contact with his readers through lecture tours in factories and offices. And so on. But if a writer refuses to conform, he not only loses all these perks; he is deprived of the possibility of exercising his profession at all.
In principle, membership of the union is not indispensable in order to get published. After all, a young titan must to some extent first make his name before he can become a member. But for an established author to get thrown out of the union is the formal and official stamp of disgrace. A writer can in fact be squeezed or silenced while he still holds his union card, because the ideological section of the party's central committee, either through the ministry of culture or the writers' union, has the decisive say on what is to be published and in how many copies. When ideological questions are involved, the circulation of a book is not determined by popular demand. A book may be sold out in a day and still not get a second printing, or it may not be published at all. The government's censorship office, the Glavlit, can hold it, suggest alterations, and in one way or another prevent it from seeing the light of day.
The case of Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a depressing illustration of this control.
http://www.newstatesman.com/europe/2008/08/soviet-solzhenitsyn-era-russia
On the death of such figures as Solzhenitsyn, the phrase ‘end of an era’ is bound to come up, but Alexander Isaevich outlived his era and never truly accepted the new ‘post-soviet’ epoch.
Having sincerely dedicated his life to a desperate struggle against communism, in 1991 Solzhenitsyn suddenly found himself without a battle to fight.
From that moment his activities grew less noticeable. He was less and less asked for his commentary on developments. A note of irony appeared in the use of his nickname: the ‘Vermont Recluse’. Then in 1994 he came out of seclusion and returned to Russia.
He returned to the country he had literally torn apart in 1962 with his short story “A Day In the Life Of Ivan Denisovich”. During a meeting of the Politburo Khrushchev himself insisted on the story’s publication. It contained no direct criticism of the Soviet system. It was a simple but detailed description of one day in a camp prisoner’s life, one almost happy day.
Solzhenitsyn was immediately made a member of the writer’s Union. More of his work was published. He felt his time had come and he tried to write as much as possible, perhaps fearing that any ‘thaw’ would be temporary. However you look at it, Solzhenitsyn was of great use to Krushchev in his efforts to ‘de-Stalinize’ the Soviet Union.
Solzhenitsyn had been sent to a camp three months before the end of the Second World War for having referred to Stalin and Lenin disrespectfully in a letter to an old school friend who was serving on the front line.
Solzhenitsyn spent eleven years in camps, special prisons, secret KGB institutions and internal exile. During that time he twice overcame cancer.
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