The novel, ”One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is set in one of Soviet’s labor camps in the 1950s, and it illustrates a single day of a prisoner the author calls Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. The author of the book is remembered as a strong antagonist of Communism and the Soviet System.
Therefore, it is strange to note that this great and masterful work was first published in November 1962 in an official literary magazine. The Soviet authorities acknowledged the publication of the novel even though it was addressing the controversial subject of the bad state of their prison camps. The novel examines the corrupt Soviet prison structure, the politics associated with it, and the philosophical difficulties involved when the freedom of someone is taken away.
The action of the novel occurs in one of the days of the life of the prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, who is serving a 3,653-day sentence in a labor camp. The jail sentence of the central character was imposed after. As one of the soldiers of the Second World War, the Germans captured him as a prisoner of war, but he was able to run away and get back to the Soviet lines. In a cruel irony of twist, he was accused of spying and thrown into the labor camp to serve the ten-year sentence.
Therefore, Shukhov is being punished for an offense he did do. The book gives an autobiographical account of the late Solzhenitsyn’s own experiences in the labor camps. He was sent to prison for his dissident views about the Soviet gulag system. Other prisoners in the camp are also depicted to be jailed for the same reasons. And most of them had been falsely accused of being spies. As a result, the readers see the injustices that the Soviet regime carried out.
Although Shukhov is not guilty of the charges leveled against him, the country’s authorities do not consider this as important. The prison sentence was mainly meant to prevent the people from criticizing the government. Moreover, it was meant to provide slave labor for Stalin’s ostentatious construction projects.
The inmates (also called “Zeks” in Russia) were organized into groups of about twenty individuals each and the main protagonist, Shukhov, belonged to the 104th (Sollars and Jennings, 580). In order to encourage the prisoners to work, the authorities gave them food depending on the amount of work they were able to complete the previous day. This compelled the prisoners to work hard so as to survive and a group could not tolerate slackness from any of its members.
On a typical day, Shukhov and his team members are scheduled to perform some tasks in a nearby power station and since he is sick, he tries in vain to obtain a sick leave. He is therefore forced to work the whole day despite his illness and under the harshest of conditions.
During the day, Shukhov and his fellow team members, such as Tyurin (the team foreman/leader), Alyosha (a devout Baptist), Fetyukov (the unashamed idler), and Buinovsky ( who served in the navy previously), face many hardships, including working in the bitter cold weather, insufficient supply of food and clothing, and frequent bullying from the camp guards.
The novel culminates with Shukhov contemplating that he had enjoyed the day. He did not succumb to his illness, he has not been thrown into the hole, he was able to get some more food, and he was able to get a weapon to use in defending himself.
The boss had gotten them good rates for their work. He’d felt good making that wall. They hadn’t found that piece of steel in the frisk. Caesar had paid him off that evening. He’d bought some tobacco. And he’d gotten over his sickness. Nothing had spoiled the day and it had been almost happy (Solzhenitsyn, 210).
This reflection is, of course, deeply sarcastic since the reader is left wondering how a bad day can be like if Shukhov enjoyed such a day full of hardships.
This book drew the world’s attention to the dictatorial nature of Soviet Communism. It made many people around the world to re-examine their view of the country’s regime at that time (Edward and Klimoff, 92). And to the Russians, it came as a shattering revelation of the practices of their government (Klimoff, 57). The author never intended to criticize openly the Communism system in the novel. If he had done this, the book would inevitably be outlawed in the country.
Solzhenitsyn simply provided an illustration of how life in the labor camps was like. However, in the long run, this description was political rhetoric to the regime. That is why it did not come as a surprise when he was forced to go into exile after the fall of Khrushchev.
The novel, which served as a powerful condemnation of the Soviet Communism, compelled the West to consent to their mistake of failing to check the country’s human rights issue; consequently, ten years later, a US-Soviet summit human rights agenda was created to address these historic injustices.
Works cited
Edward, Ericson E., and Klimoff, Alexis. The soul and barbed wire : an introduction to Solzhenitsyn. Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2008. Print.
Klimoff, Alexis. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich : a critical companion. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Press, 1997. Print.
Sollars, Michael D., and Jennings, Arbolina L. The Facts on File companion to the world novel : 1900 to the present. New York : Facts On File, 2008. Print.
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1963. Print.