Brief 1 day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. Facts from the life of A. Solzhenitsyn and the audiobook “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Several unexpected facts from the life of the writer

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn served almost a third of his prison camp term - from August 1950 to February 1953 - in the Ekibastuz special camp in northern Kazakhstan. There, at the general works, the idea of a story about one day of one prisoner flashed through on a long winter day. “It was just such a camp day, hard work, I was carrying a stretcher with a partner and thought how I should describe the entire camp world - in one day,” the author said in a television interview with Nikita Struve (March 1976). “Of course, you can describe your ten years of the camp, the entire history of the camps, but it’s enough to collect everything in one day, as if from fragments; it’s enough to describe only one day of one average, unremarkable person from morning to evening. And everything will be.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” [see. on our website its full text, summary and literary analysis] written in Ryazan, where Solzhenitsyn settled in June 1957 and from the new school year became a teacher of physics and astronomy at secondary school No. 2. Started on May 18, 1959, completed on 30 June. The work took less than a month and a half. “It always turns out like this if you write from a dense life, the way 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 fight off unnecessary material, just so that the unnecessary is not climbed, but it could accommodate the most necessary things,” the author said in a radio interview for the BBC (June 8, 1982), conducted by Barry Holland.

While writing in the camp, Solzhenitsyn, in order to keep what he wrote secret and himself along with it, first memorized only poetry, and at the end of his term, dialogues in prose and even continuous prose. In exile, and then rehabilitated, he could work without destroying passage after passage, but he had to remain hidden as before in order to avoid a new arrest. After retyping it on a typewriter, the manuscript was burned. The manuscript of the camp story was also burned. And since the typewriting had to be hidden, the text was printed on both sides of the sheet, without margins and without spaces between the lines.

Only more than two years later, after a sudden violent attack on Stalin launched by his successor N. S. Khrushchev at the XXII Party Congress (October 17 - 31, 1961), A.S. ventured to propose the story for publication. “Cave Typescript” (out of caution - without the name of the author) on November 10, 1961 was transferred by R.D. Orlova, the wife of A.S.’s prison friend, Lev Kopelev, to the prose department of the magazine “New World” to Anna Samoilovna Berzer. The typists rewrote the original, Anna Samoilovna asked Lev Kopelev, who came to the editorial office, what to call the author, and Kopelev suggested a pseudonym at his place of residence - A. Ryazansky.

On December 8, 1961, as soon as the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir, Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky, appeared at the editorial office after a month’s absence, A. S. Berzer asked him to read two difficult manuscripts. One did not need a special recommendation, at least based on what I had heard about the author: it was the story “Sofya Petrovna” by Lydia Chukovskaya. About the other, Anna Samoilovna said: “The camp through the eyes of a peasant, a very popular thing.” It was this that Tvardovsky took with him until the morning. On the night of December 8-9, he reads and rereads the story. In the morning, he dials up the chain to the same Kopelev, asks about the author, finds out his address, and a day later calls him to Moscow by telegram. On December 11, on the day of his 43rd birthday, A.S. received this telegram: “I ask the editors of the new world to come urgently, expenses will be paid = Tvardovsky.” And Kopelev already on December 9 telegraphed to Ryazan: “Alexander Trifonovich is delighted with the article” (this is how the former prisoners agreed among themselves to encrypt the unsafe story). For himself, Tvardovsky wrote down in his workbook on December 12: “The strongest impression of the last days is the manuscript of A. Ryazansky (Solongitsyn), whom I will meet today.” Tvardovsky recorded the author's real name from his voice.

On December 12, Tvardovsky received Solzhenitsyn, calling the entire editorial board to meet and talk with him. “Tvardovsky warned me,” notes A.S., “that he did not firmly promise publication (Lord, I was glad that they did not hand it over to the ChekGB!), and he would not indicate a deadline, but he would not spare any effort.” Immediately the editor-in-chief ordered to conclude an agreement with the author, as A.S. notes... “at the highest rate accepted by them (one advance is my two-year salary).” A.S. earned “sixty rubles a month” by teaching.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One day of Ivan Denisovich. The author is reading. Fragment

The original titles of the story were “Shch-854”, “One Day of One Prisoner”. The final title was composed by the editorial office of Novy Mir on the author’s first visit, at the insistence of Tvardovsky, “throwing assumptions across the table with the participation of Kopelev.”

Following all the rules of Soviet apparatus games, Tvardovsky began to gradually prepare a multi-move combination in order to ultimately enlist the support of the country’s chief apparatchik, Khrushchev, the only person who could authorize the publication of the camp story. At Tvardovsky’s request, written reviews of “Ivan Denisovich” were written by K. I. Chukovsky (his note was called “Literary Miracle”), S. Ya. Marshak, K. G. Paustovsky, K. M. Simonov... Tvardovsky himself compiled a brief preface to the story and a letter addressed to the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR N. S. Khrushchev. On August 6, 1962, after a nine-month editorial period, the manuscript of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” with a letter from Tvardovsky was sent to Khrushchev’s assistant, V. S. Lebedev, who agreed, after waiting for a favorable moment, to introduce the patron to the unusual work.

Tvardovsky wrote:

“Dear Nikita Sergeevich!

I would not have considered it possible to encroach on your time on a private literary matter, if not for this truly exceptional case.

We are talking about the amazingly talented story by A. Solzhenitsyn “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” The name of this author has not been known to anyone until now, but tomorrow it may become one of the remarkable names in our literature.

This is not only my deep conviction. The unanimous high assessment of this rare literary find by my co-editors for the New World magazine, including K. Fedin, is joined by the voices of other prominent writers and critics who had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with it in manuscript.

But due to the unusual nature of the life material covered in the story, I feel an urgent need for your advice and approval.

In a word, dear Nikita Sergeevich, if you find the opportunity to pay attention to this manuscript, I will be happy, as if it were my own work.”

In parallel with the progress of the story through the supreme labyrinths, routine work with the author on the manuscript was going on in the magazine. On July 23, the story was discussed by the editorial board. A member of the editorial board, and soon Tvardovsky’s closest collaborator, Vladimir Lakshin, wrote in his diary:

“I see Solzhenitsyn for the first time. This is a man of about forty, ugly, in a summer suit - canvas trousers and a shirt with an unbuttoned collar. The appearance is rustic, the eyes are set deep. There is a scar on the forehead. Calm, reserved, but not embarrassed. He speaks well, fluently, clearly, with an exceptional sense of dignity. Laughs openly, showing two rows of large teeth.

Tvardovsky invited him - in the most delicate form, unobtrusively - to think about the comments of Lebedev and Chernoutsan [an employee of the CPSU Central Committee, to whom Tvardovsky gave Solzhenitsyn's manuscript]. Let’s say, add righteous indignation to the kavtorang, remove the shade of sympathy for the Banderaites, give someone from the camp authorities (at least an overseer) in more conciliatory, restrained tones, not all of them were scoundrels.

Dementyev [deputy editor-in-chief of Novy Mir] spoke about the same thing more sharply and straightforwardly. Yaro stood up for Eisenstein, his “Battleship Potemkin.” He said that even from an artistic point of view he was not satisfied with the pages of the conversation with the Baptist. However, it is not the art that confuses him, but the same fears that hold him back. Dementiev also said (I objected to this) that it was important for the author to think about how his story would be received by former prisoners who remained staunch communists after the camp.

This hurt Solzhenitsyn. He replied that he had not thought about such a special category of readers and did not want to think about it. “There is a book, and there is me. Maybe I’m thinking about the reader, but this is the reader in general, and not different categories... Then, all these people were not in general work. They, according to their qualifications or former position, usually got jobs in the commandant’s office, at a bread slicer, etc. But you can understand Ivan Denisovich’s position only by working in general work, that is, knowing it from the inside. Even if I were in the same camp, but observed it from the side, I would not have written this. If I hadn’t written it, I wouldn’t have understood what kind of salvation work is...”

A dispute arose about that part of the story where the author directly speaks about the position of the katorang, that he - a sensitive, thinking person - must turn into a stupid animal. And here Solzhenitsyn did not concede: “This is the most important thing. Anyone who does not become dull in the camp, does not coarse his feelings, perishes. That's the only way I saved myself. I’m scared now to look at the photograph as I came out of it: then I was fifteen years older than now, and I was stupid, clumsy, my thought worked clumsily. And that’s the only reason I was saved. If, as an intellectual, I was internally tossing around, nervous, worried about everything that happened, I would probably die.”

During the conversation, Tvardovsky inadvertently mentioned a red pencil, which at the last minute could erase something or other from the story. Solzhenitsyn became alarmed and asked to explain what this meant. Can the editor or censor remove something without showing him the text? “To me the integrity of this thing is more valuable than its printing,” he said.

Solzhenitsyn carefully wrote down all comments and suggestions. He said that he divides them into three categories: those with which he can agree, even believes that they are beneficial; those that he will think about are difficult for him; and finally, impossible - those with which he does not want to see the thing printed.

Tvardovsky proposed his amendments timidly, almost embarrassedly, and when Solzhenitsyn took the floor, he looked at him with love and immediately agreed if the author’s objections were well founded.”

A.S. also wrote about the same discussion:

“The main thing that Lebedev demanded was to remove all those places in which the kavtorang was presented as a comic figure (by the standards of Ivan Denisovich), as he was intended, and to emphasize the partisanship of the kavtorang (you must have a “positive hero”!). This seemed to me the least of the sacrifices. I removed the comic, and what remained was something “heroic,” but “insufficiently developed,” as critics later found. Now the captain's protest at the divorce was a little inflated (the idea was that the protest was ridiculous), but this, perhaps, did not disturb the picture of the camp. Then it was necessary to use the word “butts” less often when referring to the guards; I reduced it from seven to three; less often - “bad” and “bad” about the authorities (it was a bit dense for me); and so that at least not the author, but the kavtorang would condemn the Banderaites (I gave such a phrase to the kavtorang, but later threw it out in a separate publication: it was natural for the kavtorang, but they were too heavily reviled anyway). Also, to give the prisoners some hope of freedom (but I couldn’t do that). And, the funniest thing for me, a Stalin hater, was 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 alone.) I made this concession: I mentioned “the mustachioed old man” once...”

On September 15, Lebedev told Tvardovsky by phone that “Solzhenitsyn (“One Day”) has been approved by N[ikita] S[ergeevi]ch” and that in the coming days the boss would invite him for a conversation. However, Khrushchev himself considered it necessary to enlist the support of the party elite. The decision to publish One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was made on October 12, 1962 at a meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee under pressure from Khrushchev. And only on October 20 did he receive Tvardovsky to report the favorable result of his efforts. About the story itself, Khrushchev remarked: “Yes, the material is unusual, but, I will say, both the style and the language are unusual - it’s not suddenly vulgar. Well, I think it's a very strong thing. And, despite such material, it does not evoke a heavy feeling, although there is a lot of bitterness there.”

Having read “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” even before publication, in typescript, Anna Akhmatova, who described it in “ Requiem“The grief of the “hundred-million people” on this side of the prison gates, she said with emphasis: “I must read this story and learn it by heart - every citizen out of all two hundred million citizens of the Soviet Union."

The story, called a story by the editors in the subtitle for weight, was published in the magazine “New World” (1962. No. 11. P. 8 – 74; signed for publication on November 3; advance copy was delivered to the editor-in-chief on the evening of November 15; according to Vladimir Lakshin, mailing started on November 17; on the evening of November 19, about 2,000 copies were brought to the Kremlin for participants in the plenum of the Central Committee) with a note by A. Tvardovsky “Instead of a Preface.” Circulation 96,900 copies. (with the permission of the CPSU Central Committee, 25,000 were additionally printed). Republished in “Roman-Gazeta” (M.: GIHL, 1963. No. 1/277. 47 pp. 700,000 copies) and as a book (M.: Soviet Writer, 1963. 144 pp. 100,000 copies). On June 11, 1963, Vladimir Lakshin wrote: “Solzhenitsyn gave me the hastily released “One Day...” by “Soviet Writer.” The publication is truly shameful: gloomy, colorless cover, gray paper. Alexander Isaevich jokes: “They released it in the GULAG publication.”

Cover of the publication “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in Roman-Gazeta, 1963

“In order for it [the story] to be published in the Soviet Union, it took a confluence of incredible circumstances and exceptional personalities,” noted A. Solzhenitsyn in a radio interview on the 20th anniversary of the publication of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” for the BBC (June 8, 1982 G.). – It is absolutely clear: if Tvardovsky had not been the editor-in-chief of the magazine, no, this story would not have been published. But I'll add. And if Khrushchev had not been there at that moment, it would not have been published either. More: if Khrushchev had not attacked Stalin one more time at that very 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, as if, for example, objects began to rise upward from the ground on their own, or cold stones began to heat up on their own, heating up to the point of fire. This is impossible, this is absolutely impossible. The system was structured this way, and for 45 years it had not released anything - and suddenly there was such a breakthrough. Yes, Tvardovsky, Khrushchev, and the moment - everyone had to get together. Of course, I could then send it abroad and publish it, but now, from the reaction of Western socialists, it is clear: if it had been published in the West, these same socialists would have said: it’s all lies, none of this happened, and there were no camps, and there was no destruction, nothing happened. It was only because everyone was speechless because it was published with the permission of the Central Committee in Moscow that it shocked me.”

“If this [submission of the manuscript to Novy Mir and publication at home] had not happened, something else would have happened, and worse,” A. Solzhenitsyn wrote fifteen years earlier, “I would have sent the photographic film with camp things - abroad, under the pseudonym Stepan Khlynov , as it had already been prepared. I didn’t know that in the best case scenario, if it were both published and noticed in the West, not even a hundredth of that influence could have happened.”

The publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is associated with the author’s return to work on The Gulag Archipelago. “Even before Ivan Denisovich, I conceived the Archipelago,” Solzhenitsyn said in a television interview with CBS (June 17, 1974), conducted by Walter Cronkite, “I felt that such a systematic thing was needed, a general plan of everything that was , and in time, how it happened. But my personal experience and the experience of my comrades, no matter how much I asked about the camps, all the fates, all the episodes, all the stories, was not enough for such a thing. And when “Ivan Denisovich” was published, letters to me exploded from all over Russia, and in the letters people wrote what they had experienced, what they had. Or they insisted on meeting me and telling me, and I started dating. Everyone asked me, the author of the first camp story, to write more, more, to 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.” “And so I collected indescribable material, which cannot be collected in the Soviet Union, only thanks to “Ivan Denisovich,” summed up A.S. in a radio interview for the BBC on June 8, 1982. “So it became like a pedestal for “The Gulag Archipelago”.

In December 1963, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was nominated for the Lenin Prize by the editorial board of the New World and the Central State Archive of Literature and Art. According to Pravda (February 19, 1964), selected “for further discussion.” Then included in the list for secret voting. Didn't receive the prize. Laureates in the field of literature, journalism and publicism were Oles Gonchar for the novel “Tronka” and Vasily Peskov for the book “Steps on the Dew” (“Pravda”, April 22, 1964). “Even then, in April 1964, there was talk in Moscow that this story with the vote was a “rehearsal for a putsch” against Nikita: would the apparatus succeed or not succeed in withdrawing a book approved by Himself? In 40 years they have never dared to do this. But they became bolder and succeeded. This reassured them that He Himself was not strong.”

From the second half of the 60s, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was withdrawn from circulation in the USSR along with other publications by A.S. The final ban on them was introduced by order of the Main Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press, agreed upon with the Central Committee of the CPSU, dated January 28, 1974 Glavlit’s order No. 10 of February 14, 1974, specially dedicated to Solzhenitsyn, lists the issues of the magazine “New World” containing the writer’s works that are subject to removal from public libraries (No. 11, 1962; No. 1, 7, 1963; No. 1, 1966) and separate editions of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, including a translation into Estonian and a book “for the blind”. The order is accompanied by a note: “Foreign publications (including newspapers and magazines) containing the works of the specified author are also subject to seizure.” The ban was lifted by a note from the Ideological Department of the CPSU Central Committee dated December 31, 1988.

Since 1990, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich has been published again in his homeland.

Foreign feature film based on “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”

In 1971, an English-Norwegian film was made based on “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (directed by Kasper Wrede, Tom Courtenay played Shukhov). For the first time, A. Solzhenitsyn was able to watch it only in 1974. Speaking on French television (March 9, 1976), when asked by the presenter about this film, he answered:

“I must say that the directors and actors of this film approached the task very honestly, and with great penetration, they themselves did not experience this, did not survive, but were able to guess this painful mood and were able to convey this slow pace that fills the life of such a prisoner 10 years, sometimes 25, unless, as often happens, he dies first. Well, very minor criticisms can be made of the design; this is mostly where the Western imagination simply cannot imagine the details of such a life. For example, for our eyes, for mine, or if my friends could see it, former prisoners (will they ever see this film?), - for our eyes the padded jackets are too clean, not torn; then, almost all the actors, in general, are heavy-set men, and yet in the camp there are people on the very verge of death, their cheeks are hollow, they have no more strength. According to the film, it’s so warm in the barracks that there’s a Latvian sitting there with bare legs and arms - this is impossible, you’ll freeze. Well, these are minor remarks, but in general, I must say, I’m surprised how the authors of the film could understand so much and with a sincere soul tried to convey our suffering to the Western audience.”

The day described in the story occurs in January 1951.

Based on materials from the works of Vladimir Radzishevsky.

Peasant and front-line soldier Ivan Denisovich Shukhov turned out to be a “state criminal”, a “spy” and ended up in one of Stalin’s camps, like millions of Soviet people, convicted without guilt during the “cult of personality” and mass repressions. He left home on June 23, 1941, on the second day after the start of the war with Nazi Germany, “...in February 1942, their entire army was surrounded on the North-Western [Front], and nothing was thrown at them from the planes to eat, and there were no planes either. They went so far as to cut the hooves off dead horses, soak that cornea in water and eat it,” that is, the command of the Red Army abandoned its soldiers to die surrounded. Together with a group of fighters, Shukhov found himself in German captivity, fled from the Germans and miraculously reached his own. A careless story about how he was in captivity led him to a Soviet concentration camp, since the state security authorities indiscriminately considered all those who escaped from captivity to be spies and saboteurs.

The second part of Shukhov’s memories and reflections during long camp labors and a short rest in the barracks relates to his life in the village. From the fact that his relatives do not send him food (he himself refused the parcels in a letter to his wife), we understand that they are starving in the village no less than in the camp. The wife writes to Shukhov that collective farmers make a living by painting fake carpets and selling them to townspeople.

If we leave aside flashbacks and random information about life outside the barbed wire, the entire story takes exactly one day. In this short period of time, a panorama of camp life unfolds before us, a kind of “encyclopedia” of life in the camp.

Firstly, a whole gallery of social types and at the same time bright human characters: Caesar is a metropolitan intellectual, a former film figure, who, however, even in the camp leads a “lordly” life compared to Shukhov: he receives food parcels, enjoys some benefits during work ; Kavtorang - a repressed naval officer; an old convict who had also been in tsarist prisons and hard labor (the old revolutionary guard, who did not find a common language with the policies of Bolshevism in the 30s); Estonians and Latvians are the so-called “bourgeois nationalists”; Baptist Alyosha is an exponent of the thoughts and way of life of a very heterogeneous religious Russia; Gopchik is a sixteen-year-old teenager whose fate shows that repression did not distinguish between children and adults. And Shukhov himself is a typical representative of the Russian peasantry with his special business acumen and organic way of thinking. Against the background of these people who suffered from repression, a different figure emerges - the head of the regime, Volkov, who regulates the lives of prisoners and, as it were, symbolizes the merciless communist regime.

Secondly, a detailed picture of camp life and work. Life in the camp remains life with its visible and invisible passions and subtle experiences. They are mainly related to the problem of getting food. They are fed little and poorly with terrible gruel with frozen cabbage and small fish. A kind of art of life in the camp is to get yourself an extra ration of bread and an extra bowl of gruel, and if you're lucky, a little tobacco. For this, one has to resort to the greatest tricks, currying favor with “authorities” like Caesar and others. At the same time, it is important to preserve your human dignity, not to become a “descended” beggar, like, for example, Fetyukov (however, there are few of them in the camp). This is important not even for lofty reasons, but out of necessity: a “descended” person loses the will to live and will certainly die. Thus, the question of preserving the human image within oneself becomes a question of survival. The second vital issue is the attitude towards forced labor. Prisoners, especially in winter, work hard, almost competing with each other and team with team, in order not to freeze and in a way “shorten” the time from overnight to overnight, from feeding to feeding. The terrible system of collective labor is built on this incentive. But nevertheless, it does not completely destroy the natural joy of physical labor in people: the scene of the construction of a house by the team where Shukhov works is one of the most inspired in the story. The ability to work “correctly” (without overexerting, but also without slacking), as well as the ability to get extra rations, is also a high art. As well as the ability to hide from the eyes of the guards a piece of saw that turns up, from which the camp craftsmen make miniature knives for exchange for food, tobacco, warm things... In relation to the guards who are constantly conducting “shmons”, Shukhov and the rest of the Prisoners are in the position of wild animals : they must be more cunning and dexterous than armed people who have the right to punish them and even shoot them for deviating from the camp regime. Deceiving the guards and camp authorities is also a high art.

The day that the hero narrates was, in his own opinion, successful - “they didn’t put him in a punishment cell, they didn’t send the brigade to Sotsgorodok (working in a bare field in winter - editor’s note), at lunch he mowed down porridge (he got an extra portion - editor's note), the foreman closed the interest well (the camp labor assessment system - editor's note), Shukhov laid the wall cheerfully, did not get caught with a hacksaw on the search, worked in the evening at Caesar's and bought tobacco. And he didn’t get sick, he got over it. The day passed, unclouded, almost happy. There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his period from bell to bell. Due to leap years, three extra days were added...”

At the end of the story, a brief dictionary of criminal expressions and specific camp terms and abbreviations that appear in the text is given.

Retold

At the end of the story, a brief dictionary of criminal expressions and specific camp terms and abbreviations that appear in the text is given.

You have read a summary of the story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. We invite you to visit the Summary section to read other summaries of popular writers.

Solzhenitsyn conceived the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” when he was in the winter of 1950-1951. in the Ekibazstuz camp. He decided to describe all the years of imprisonment in one day, “and that will be all.” The original title of the story is the writer's camp number.

The story, which was called “Shch-854. One day of one prisoner,” written in 1951 in Ryazan. There Solzhenitsyn worked as a teacher of physics and astronomy. The story was published in 1962 in the magazine “New World” No. 11 at the request of Khrushchev himself, and was published twice as separate books. This is Solzhenitsyn's first published work, which brought him fame. Since 1971, editions of the story were destroyed according to the unspoken instructions of the Party Central Committee.

Solzhenitsyn received many letters from former prisoners. He wrote “The Gulag Archipelago” on this material, calling “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” a pedestal for it.

The main character Ivan Denisovich has no prototype. His character and habits are reminiscent of the soldier Shukhov, who fought in the Great Patriotic War in Solzhenitsyn’s battery. But Shukhov never sat. The hero is a collective image of many prisoners seen by Solzhenitsyn and the embodiment of the experience of Solzhenitsyn himself. The rest of the characters in the story are written “from life”; their prototypes have the same biographies. The image of Captain Buinovsky is also collective.

Akhmatova believed that every person in the USSR should read and memorize this work.

Literary direction and genre

Solzhenitsyn called “One Day...” a story, but when published in Novy Mir, the genre was defined as a story. Indeed, in terms of volume, the work can be considered a story, but neither the duration of action nor the number of characters correspond to this genre. On the other hand, representatives of all nationalities and segments of the population of the USSR are sitting in the barracks. So the country seems to be a place of confinement, a “prison of nations.” And this generalization allows us to call the work a story.

The literary direction of the story is realism, not counting the mentioned modernist generalization. As the title suggests, it shows one day of a prisoner. This is a typical hero, a generalized image of not only a prisoner, but also a Soviet person in general, a survivor, not free.

Solzhenitsyn's story, by the very fact of its existence, destroyed the harmonious concept of socialist realism.

Issues

For Soviet people, the story opened up a forbidden topic - the life of millions of people trapped in camps. The story seemed to expose Stalin’s personality cult, but Solzhenitsyn mentioned Stalin’s name once at the insistence of the editor of Novy Mir, Tvardovsky. For Solzhenitsyn, a once devoted communist who was imprisoned for scolding “Godfather” (Stalin) in a letter to a friend, this work is an exposure of the entire Soviet system and society.

The story raises many philosophical and ethical problems: human freedom and dignity, the justice of punishment, the problem of relationships between people.

Solzhenitsyn turns to the traditional problem of the little man in Russian literature. The goal of numerous Soviet camps is to make all people small, cogs in a big mechanism. Those who cannot become small must die. The story generally depicts the entire country as a large camp barracks. Solzhenitsyn himself said: “I saw the Soviet regime, and not Stalin alone.” This is how readers understood the work. The authorities quickly realized this and outlawed the story.

Plot and composition

Solzhenitsyn set out to describe one day, from early morning until late evening, of an ordinary person, an unremarkable prisoner. Through the reasoning or memories of Ivan Denisovich, the reader learns the smallest details of the life of prisoners, some facts of the biography of the main character and his entourage, and the reasons why the heroes ended up in the camp.

Ivan Denisovich considers this day almost happy. Lakshin noted that this is a strong artistic move, because the reader himself can imagine what the most miserable day could be like. Marshak noted that this is a story not about a camp, but about a person.

Heroes of the story

Shukhov- peasant, soldier. He ended up in the camp for the usual reason. He fought honestly at the front, but ended up in captivity, from which he escaped. This was enough for the prosecution.

Shukhov is the bearer of folk peasant psychology. His character traits are typical of the Russian common man. He is kind, but not without cunning, hardy and resilient, capable of any work with his hands, an excellent craftsman. It’s strange for Shukhov to sit in a clean room and do nothing for 5 minutes. Chukovsky called him the brother of Vasily Terkin.

Solzhenitsyn deliberately did not make the hero an intellectual or an unjustly injured officer, a communist. This was supposed to be “the average soldier of the Gulag, on whom everything falls.”

The camp and Soviet power in the story are described through the eyes of Shukhov and acquire the features of the creator and his creation, but this creator is the enemy of man. The man in the camp resists everything. For example, the forces of nature: 37 degrees Shukhov resists 27 degrees of frost.

The camp has its own history and mythology. Ivan Denisovich recalls how they took away his boots and gave him felt boots (so that he didn’t have two pairs of shoes), how, in order to torture people, they were ordered to pack bread in suitcases (and they had to mark their piece). Time in this chronotope also flows according to its own laws, because in this camp no one had an end to their term. In this context, the statement that a person in a camp is more valuable than gold sounds ironic, because instead of a lost prisoner, the warden will add his own head. Thus, the number of people in this mythological world does not decrease.

Time also does not belong to the prisoners, because the camp inmate lives for himself only 20 minutes a day: 10 minutes at breakfast, 5 at lunch and dinner.

There are special laws in the camp according to which man is a wolf to man (no wonder the surname of the head of the regime, Lieutenant Volkova). This harsh world has its own criteria of life and justice. Shukhov is taught them by his first foreman. He says that in the camp “the law is the taiga,” and teaches that the one who licks the bowls, hopes for the medical unit and knocks “kuma” (Chekist) on others perishes. But, if you think about it, these are the laws of human society: you cannot humiliate yourself, pretend and betray your neighbor.

The author, through the eyes of Shukhov, pays equal attention to all the characters in the story. And they all behave with dignity. Solzhenitsyn admires the Baptist Alyoshka, who does not give up prayer and so skillfully hides a little book in which half the Gospel is copied into a crack in the wall that it has not yet been found during a search. The writer likes Western Ukrainians, Banderaites, who also pray before eating. Ivan Denisovich sympathizes with Gopchik, a boy who was imprisoned for carrying milk to Bandera’s men in the forest.

Brigadier Tyurin is described almost lovingly. He is “a son of the Gulag, serving his second term. He takes care of his charges, and the foreman is everything in the camp.

The former film director Caesar Markovich, the former captain of the second rank Buinovsky, and the former Bandera member Pavel do not lose their dignity in any circumstances.

Solzhenitsyn, along with his hero, condemns Panteleev, who remains in the camp to snitch on someone who has lost his human appearance; Fetyukov, who licks bowls and begs for cigarette butts.

Artistic originality of the story

The story removes language taboos. The country became familiar with the jargon of prisoners (prisoner, shmon, wool, download license). At the end of the story there was a dictionary for those who were lucky enough not to recognize such words.

The story is written in the third person, the reader sees Ivan Denisovich from the outside, his whole long day passes before his eyes. But at the same time, Solzhenitsyn describes everything that happens in the words and thoughts of Ivan Denisovich, a man of the people, a peasant. He survives by cunning and resourcefulness. This is how special camp aphorisms arise: work is a double-edged sword; for people, give quality, but for the boss, show off; you have to try. so that the warden does not see you alone, but only in a crowd.

Solzhenitsyn wrote the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1959. The work was first published in 1962 in the magazine “New World”. The story brought Solzhenitsyn worldwide fame and, according to researchers, influenced not only literature, but also the history of the USSR. The original author's title of the work is the story “Shch-854” (the serial number of the main character Shukhov in the correctional camp).

Main characters

Shukhov Ivan Denisovich- a prisoner of a forced labor camp, a bricklayer, his wife and two daughters are waiting for him “in the wild.”

Caesar- a prisoner, “either he is Greek, or a Jew, or a gypsy,” before the camps “he made films for cinema.”

Other heroes

Tyurin Andrey Prokofievich- Brigadier of the 104th Prison Brigade. He was “dismissed from the ranks” of the army and ended up in a camp for being the son of a “kulak”. Shukhov knew him from the camp in Ust-Izhma.

Kildigs Ian– a prisoner who was given 25 years; Latvian, good carpenter.

Fetyukov- “jackal”, prisoner.

Alyoshka- prisoner, Baptist.

Gopchik- a prisoner, cunning, but harmless boy.

“At five o’clock in the morning, as always, the rise struck - with a hammer on the rail at the headquarters barracks.” Shukhov never woke up, but today he was “chilling” and “breaking.” Because the man did not get up for a long time, he was taken to the commandant’s office. Shukhov was threatened with a punishment cell, but he was punished only by washing the floors.

For breakfast in the camp there was balanda (liquid stew) of fish and black cabbage and porridge from magara. The prisoners slowly ate the fish, spat the bones onto the table, and then swept them onto the floor.

After breakfast, Shukhov went into the medical unit. A young paramedic, who was actually a former student of the literary institute, but under the patronage of a doctor ended up in the medical unit, gave the man a thermometer. Showed 37.2. The paramedic suggested that Shukhov “stay at his own risk” to wait for the doctor, but still advised him to go to work.

Shukhov went into the barracks for rations: bread and sugar. The man divided the bread into two parts. I hid one under my padded jacket, and the second in the mattress. Baptist Alyoshka read the Gospel right there. The guy “so deftly stuffs this little book into a crack in the wall - they haven’t found it on a single search yet.”

The brigade went outside. Fetyukov tried to get Caesar to “sip” a cigarette, but Caesar was more willing to share with Shukhov. During the “shmona”, prisoners were forced to unbutton their clothes: they checked whether anyone had hidden a knife, food, or letters. People were frozen: “the cold has gotten under your shirt, now you can’t get rid of it.” The column of prisoners moved. “Due to the fact that he had breakfast without rations and ate everything cold, Shukhov felt unfed today.”

“A new year began, the fifty-first, and in it Shukhov had the right to two letters.” “Shukhov left the house on the twenty-third of June forty-one. On Sunday, people from Polomnia came from mass and said: war.” Shukhov's family was waiting for him at home. His wife hoped that upon returning home her husband would start a profitable business and build a new house.

Shukhov and Kildigs were the first foremen in the brigade. They were sent to insulate the turbine room and lay the walls with cinder blocks at the thermal power plant.

One of the prisoners, Gopchik, reminded Ivan Denisovich of his late son. Gopchik was imprisoned “for carrying milk to the Bendera people in the forest.”

Ivan Denisovich has almost served his sentence. In February 1942, “in the North-West, their entire army was surrounded, and nothing was thrown from the planes for them to eat, and there were no planes. They went so far as to cut off the hooves of dead horses.” Shukhov was captured, but soon escaped. However, “their own people,” having learned about the captivity, decided that Shukhov and other soldiers were “fascist agents.” It was believed that he was imprisoned “for treason”: he surrendered to German captivity, and then returned “because he was carrying out a task for German intelligence. What kind of task - neither Shukhov himself nor the investigator could come up with.”

Lunch break. The workers were not given extra food, the “sixes” got a lot, and the cook took away the good food. For lunch there was oatmeal porridge. It was believed that this was the “best porridge” and Shukhov even managed to deceive the cook and take two servings for himself. On the way to the construction site, Ivan Denisovich picked up a piece of a steel hacksaw.

The 104th brigade was “like a big family.” Work began to boil again: they were laying cinder blocks on the second floor of the thermal power plant. They worked until sunset. The foreman, jokingly, noted Shukhov’s good work: “Well, how can we let you go free? Without you, the prison will cry!”

The prisoners returned to the camp. The men were harassed again, checking to see if they had taken anything from the construction site. Suddenly Shukhov felt in his pocket a piece of a hacksaw, which he had already forgotten about. It could be used to make a shoe knife and exchange it for food. Shukhov hid the hacksaw in his mitten and miraculously passed the test.

Shukhov took Caesar's place in line to receive the package. Ivan Denisovich himself did not receive the parcels: he asked his wife not to take them away from the children. In gratitude, Caesar gave Shukhov his dinner. In the dining room they served gruel again. Sipping the hot liquid, the man felt good: “here it is, the short moment for which the prisoner lives!”

Shukhov earned money “from private work” - he sewed slippers for someone, sewed a quilted jacket for someone. With the money he earned, he could buy tobacco and other necessary things. When Ivan Denisovich returned to his barracks, Caesar was already “humming over the parcel” and also gave Shukhov his ration of bread.

Caesar asked Shukhov for a knife and “got into debt to Shukhov again.” The check has begun. Ivan Denisovich, realizing that Caesar’s parcel could be stolen during the check, told him to pretend to be sick and go out last, while Shukhov would try to be the very first to run in after the check and look after the food. In gratitude, Caesar gave him “two biscuits, two lumps of sugar and one round slice of sausage.”

We talked with Alyosha about God. The guy said that you need to pray and be glad that you are in prison: “here you have time to think about your soul.” “Shukhov silently looked at the ceiling. He himself didn’t know whether he wanted it or not.”

“Shukhov fell asleep, completely satisfied.” “They didn’t put him in a punishment cell, they didn’t send the brigade to Sotsgorodok, he made porridge at lunch, the foreman closed the interest well, Shukhov laid the wall cheerfully, he didn’t get caught with a hacksaw on a search, he worked in the evening at Caesar’s and bought tobacco. And I didn’t get sick, I got over it.”

“The day passed, unclouded, almost happy.

There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his period from bell to bell.

Due to leap years, three extra days were added...”

Conclusion

In the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Alexander Solzhenitsyn depicted the life of people who ended up in Gulag forced labor camps. The central theme of the work, according to Tvardovsky, is the victory of the human spirit over camp violence. Despite the fact that the camp was actually created to destroy the personality of the prisoners, Shukhov, like many others, manages to constantly wage an internal struggle, to remain human even in such difficult circumstances.