One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1963)
Novella – 140 pages – my copy (Penguin paperback) bought for £1.50 from the wonderful BookStore in Truro, Cornwall around Xmas 2009
- 4 nods

A story so popular that its author was lauded as a hero in the contrasting worlds of Soviet Russia and the capitalist Western countries. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was one of the first stories in print to expose the brutality of life in the Russian gulag: of hard labour, of the blistering cold, of sanctions and of wasted years of life. ‘The days rolled by in the camp – they were over before you could say "knife". But the years, they never rolled by: they never moved by a second’ (p.56)

Writing with authority – having done ‘hard-time’ himself – Solzhenitsyn writes of Ivan Denisovich (known to all as Shukhov) and his struggle in Siberia. On first reading, one might expect Shukhov to do something spectacular, to rebel, to become the hero, to regain his long forgotten freedom. None of this happens; and it is what makes this story unique and special. Shukhov is a run of the mill prisoner, an ordinary Joe Bloggs in his home village; his heroic exploits include the hiding of his daily ration bread and of surviving the cold, icy weather outside during his working day.

This day, then, is one of life’s small battles. But also, of the struggle to keep what remained of the life one had before, with a prisoner’s humanity being chipped away, bit by bit. As the author writes: ‘During his years in prisons and camps he’d lost the habit of planning for the next day, for a year ahead, for supporting his family. The authorities did his thinking for him about everything – it was somehow easier that way’ (p.38).

The book is a condemnation of the thousands who were wrongly imprisoned in Soviet Russia, especially under Stalin’s iron rule. One of the most spectacular facts is that the book actually got published; arriving in a moment of a political ‘thaw’. Of course, Solzhenitsyn’s popularity in both camps would not last, being used a political pin-ball by the divided camps of the Cold War. Yet, this book, continues as a gold-standard of modern fiction.