chapter iii one day in the life of ivan denisovich: a tale of...
TRANSCRIPT
Chapter III
One Day In the LIfe Of Ivan DenIsOvICh: a
taLe Of human wOes:
“The Extraordinary political and intellectual feat of
Solzhenitsyn was to emerge from the hell of concentration
camp to tell the story---- in books whose moral and
documentary force has no parallel in modern history.” Mario
Vargas Llosa.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is the most celebrated
novel of A. Solzhenitsyn. Apart from being a literary masterpiece, it
is a revolutionary document. It is one of the finest expose of the
real tyranny of the communists’ hardships and at a larger level of
all dictatorships.
Solzhenitsyn tried to reveal a blatant truth about the Soviet
regime that though the title of the most heinous dictator of the 20th
century of course goes to Adolf Hitler, but Hitler burned out quickly,
in twelve years. In fact the title should go to Stalin. He tried to
expose, through his novels that Stalin proved more dangerous to
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humanity than Hitler. Stalin lasted for many years; he died an old
man while still in power.
He was a beacon of a steady and stable evil. Whatever good
he did was obliterated by the immeasurable evil that came with it.
The economic sabotage, social unrest, massive and systematic
human rights violations, widespread famine and poverty—all were
worse than his predecessors. Russia did not fare well under the
Czars, but the situations under the regime of Stalin was rather
grave than them. He puts before us the cruel face of an
authoritarian regime. The novel “One Day ----” is a tale of “Man’s
inhumanity to man”.
The influence of Leo Tolstoy is clearly visible on the title of
the novel. In an interview, once Solzhenitsyn stated that he had
been interested in a statement made by Leo Tolstoy, who said that
a novel could deal with either centuries of European history or with
one day in a man’s life. This statement by Tolstoy may be one of
the reasons behind changing the title of the novel from S-854 to
One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is literally a prison
story, and it takes its place in a long list of similar works which
deals with conditions in prisons, labour camps, concentration
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camps, mental hospitals, or POW camps. It comes in the category
of the similar other works like The Survivor by Terrence Des Pres,
The Bridge on the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle, This Way for the
Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Borowski, Papillon by Henri
Charriere and many other German, French and British POW
novels.
It was probably an accident that One Day--------- was
published exactly one hundred years after Letters from the House
of the Dead, Dostoevsky’s famous account of his own experience
in prison under the Czar. But many Russians would certainly
recognize the connection between them and realize the irony
inherent in the comparison: prisoners under hated Czars were, by
far, more humane than those under Stalin, and very few people
were imprisoned during the Czars.
Solzhenitsyn has laid open a whole new world. For almost
three decades the whole USSR was turned in to a vast
concentration camp. The life of all Soviet citizens was directly or
indirectly influenced by the camp system. There was hardly a
family that did not have a son, a husband, a brother, or some other
relative in a camp. Solzhenitsyn says it was a known reality but
few could believe it outside the Soviet Union.
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Max Hayward and Leopold write truly in the introduction of
the translation of “One Day --------.
“The blanket of silence over the prison-camp universe was
as thick as the snow over the world’s greatest land mass,
stretching from the Kola Peninsula to Magadan, from Vorkuta to
Kolyama.”
Solzhenitsyn succeeded in creating a greater impression of
horror and revulsion than anything ever published abroad by even
the most embittered victims of the concentration camps, because
of his great artistic quality.
Georg Lukacs writes very truly about Solzhenitsyn:
“Solzhenitsyn’s achievement consists in the literary transformation
of an uneventful day in a typical camp in to a symbol of a past
which has not yet been overcome, nor has it been portrayed
artistically. The camp epitomize one extreme of the Stalin era, the
author has his skilful grey monochrome of camp life in to a symbol
of everyday life under Stalin”. ( Lukacs 1970:13)
The novel was considered more authentic and convincing
because it was written by a person who himself had remained a
staunch supporter of Communist ideology. It was a bold attempt by
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a Russian himself to show the world outside Russia that how
common men were suffering in a so called an ideal Communist
state. In the novel Solzhenitsyn tried to expose that how an ideal
utopian socialist concept had turned in to an authoritarian,
inhuman, insensitive system where even the basic human dignity
had been sacrificed.
It was really a difficult task to revive the Great Russian
tradition of raising the human concerns and social issues through
literature in a communist state. Trying to present the gloomy
contemporary literary scenario Solzhenitsyn wrote to The Fourth
National Congress of Soviet Writers- May 1967:
“Many writers were subjected, during their life time to abuse and
slender. Moreover they have been exposed to violence and
personal persecution (Bulgakov, Akhmatova, Tsvetayava,
Pasternak, Platonov, Alexandr Grin, Vasilly Grossman). The
leadership of the union cowardly abandoned to their distress those
for whom persecution ended in exile, camps, and death (Pavel,
Vasilyev, Artem Vesely, Babel, Tabidze, and others).”
He further added:
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“We learned after the 20th congress of the party that there
were more than 600 writers whom the union had obediently
handed over to their fate in prison and camps.”
( Labedz 1970:243)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn took up the challenge to restore the
literary and human values of the past. Solzhenitsyn very astutely
put forward the general conditions of the Russian people as Max
Hayward and Leopold Labedz write in the introduction of their
English translation of the text, about these concentration camps:
“He shows that the camps were not an isolated feature in an
otherwise admirable society. They were, in fact, microcosms of
that society as a whole. The novel draws an implicit parallel
between life “inside” and “outside” the camp. A day in the life of an
ordinary Soviet citizen had much in common with that of his
unfortunate fellow countrymen behind the barbed wire. We can
realize that on both sides of the fence it was the same story of
material and spiritual squalor, corruption, frustration and terror.”
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is the first novel of
Solzhenitsyn. After going through four or five drafts, Solzhenitsyn
reached at a finished version of One Day in 1958-59.It was
published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novyi
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Mir (New World), no.11: 8-74. The publication of One Day---
immediately put Solzhenitsyn on the scene of world literature.
Solzhenitsyn instantly became a world celebrity. Discussing the
euphoria generated by the event, Sergei Volkov wrote:
“I was eighteen then, and I remember the general shock
caused by One Day………, both because it had been published at
all and for its enormous artistic power. This publication created in
the intelligentsia a sense of unprecedented euphoria which lasted,
just over a week.” (Volkov 2008: 205)
Nikita Khrushchev came to power as the premier of the
Soviet Union in, 1953. He made it possible for Solzhenitsyn to
publish his epoch making novel One Day------------It was like a
rebirth of the critical realism in Russian literature. The public
process of “de-Stalinization” which started in 1961 created a venue
in which Solzhenitsyn could write a book detailing the sufferings
and abuses of Stalin’s forced labour camps for political prisoners.
N S Khrushchev said in his memorable concluding address at the
twenty second Congress:
“It is our duty to go carefully in to all aspects of all matters
connected with the abuse of the power. In time we must die, for we
are all mortal, but as long as we go on working we can and must
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clarify many things and tell the truth to the party and the people..
This must be done to prevent such things from happening in the
future.” (Khrushchev: 196I, 82).
Two people helped him a lot in the publication of One Day----
----Lev Kopelev and A. Tvardovsky. As mentioned in the
introduction earlier, Tvardovsky (The editor of Novy Mir) took
personal interest in the publication of the novel. Tvardovsky
personally met Khrushchev and persuaded him to grant the
permission to publish the novel. In fact, Tvardovsky sensed his
commercial interests in the publication of the novel in the changed
political scenario. Alexander Tvardovsky also wrote a short
introduction for the issue, titled “Instead of a Foreword,” to prepare
the journal’s readers for what they were going to experience.
Discussing about the importance and the relevance of the novel
Alexander Tvardovsky writes:
“The effect of this novel, which is so unusual for its honesty
and harrowing truth, is to unburden our minds of things thus far
unspoken, but which had to be said. It thereby strengthens and
ennobles us.” (Novy Mir, No. 11:8-74)
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Tvardovsky was right in his assumption. Almost one million
copies of the novel One Day--------were sold out immediately. It
was an instant hit. Pravda and other soviet publications praised the
book. The book became that much popular that One Day in the
Life of…was specially mentioned in the Noble Prize presentation
speech when the Noble Committee awarded Solzhenitsyn the
Noble Prize in Literature in1970.
The novel One Day---------is based upon the
experiences of a simple peasant imprisoned in the Siberian Gulag.
Solzhenitsyn’s choice of a peasant, Shukhov as his protagonist,
echoes the fascination of 19th century Russian writers. Tolstoy,
Turgenev, and Nekrasov idealized peasants in their early and mid-
nineteenth century writings. The same trend was followed by
Chekhov and Bunin. But here, the writer is selecting it with a
different motto. He wanted to convey a message to the common
men of Russia that how an ordinary man could keep his human
dignity intact even in the inhuman repression and the others also
should think about it. It appears that somewhere Solzhenitsyn is
calling for change in the contemporary communist regime. The
novel was used by Khrushchev as propagandistic tool to condemn
the Stalinist system.
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Pointing out the main thematic concerns in the One Day in-
Harrison E Salisbury writes:
“The cruelty, the falseness of the charges, the animal fight
for survival, the debasement, the cynical grafting, the sentences
stretching in to Infinity( or death) the hunger, the suffering, the cold
etc are the prime themes, elaborated in the novel.”
(New York Times, Jan22, 1963)
The novel is largely based upon the personal experiences of
Alexander Solzhenitsyn himself of his four years experience of an
eight year sentence at Dzezkazgan in the province of Karaganda
in central Kazakhstan. The protagonist of the novel, Ivan
Denisovich Shukhov is no one other but Solzhenitsyn himself. Like
Shukhov, Solzhenitsyn worked as a foundry man and a bricklayer
during his sentence Like Shukhov, he was the member of the 104th
squad. Tiurin one of his sympathetic squad leaders is almost
certainly based upon a man of the same name with whom
Solzhenitsyn served in the real 104th squad. Tsezar and Alyosha
the Baptist are also based on real men.
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The novel One Day in the Life ---is a very detailed and
graphic description of one man’s life struggle in a Stalinist work
camp. Though the novel is a small one but Solzhenitsyn has
successfully created the world of horror before us. The world of
torture and abuse is recreated. He made his point by concentrating
on the relentless minutiae of everyday life. Camp jargon, popular
sayings, slang and coarse vernacular lent authenticity to the
peasant- prisoners voice; while the narrative is masterfully
couched in short, spare, staccato sentences, mirroring the one
track minds of prisoners, whose endless struggle to survive left
them no time for leisurely philosophizing or dreams.
Reading on this level, the novel becomes a scathing
indictment to the Soviet system as a whole. Thousands of innocent
men were taken from their families, homes and lives, and stripped
of their dignity and banished to the harsh labour camps where they
were to spend the rest of the days scraping out an existence and
living day to day. Here are chronic food shortages, except for a
privileged few who can bribe advantages out of corrupt officials.
There is vandalism and bureaucratic inefficiency, leading to the
waste and sabotage.
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Solzhenitsyn further reveals that all these are not limited to
the camp life only. Rather it has become permanent features of the
Soviet life. The people are living under a threat of constant spying
and informing activities which are typical of Soviet society.
Solzhenitsyn deplores all this as it creates distrust among people
who should cooperate against the authorities rather than against
themselves. A prisoner, he says, is another prisoner’s worst
enemy, not the authorities. Solzhenitsyn shows that how the
communist regime has succeeded in dividing the society by using
force and through lucrative dialects.
Solzhenitsyn reveals that how all these prisoners are in fact
serving life terms, though initially they are sentenced for ten years
and sometimes for twenty years. Nobody was ever released from
the larger Soviet prison; when one term ends, another one is
added on.
It is very interesting to note the specific observation of
Hannah Arendt about the nature of the totalitarian state. She very
clearly discerns the link between the totalitarian rule and the
particular condition of life that is the camp. She writes:
“The supreme goal of all totalitarian states is not only the
freely admitted, long ranging ambition to global rule, but also the
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never admitted and immediately realized attempt at total
domination. The concentration camps are the laboratories in the
experiment of total domination, for human nature being what it is;
this goal can be achieved only under the extreme circumstances of
human made hell.” (Hannah, Arendt. 2000, 240)
The book is not divided into chapters and therefore it
remains very interesting from very beginning to the end. It is like
the reader is spending the day with Ivan. Through the character of
Shukhov, Solzhenitsyn shows us a normal day in the camp.
Through this day, he tells the people, the life conditions, and the
general atmosphere of the camp .Though the time span is very
limited, it is only a day and hence it is very difficult to develop a
character. Yet Solzhenitsyn tries his best to achieve his goals by
using flashbacks to show the different sides of the various
characters specially the character of Shukhov.
The choice of a protagonist created a problem of narration
for Solzhenitsyn. Ivan is certainly not unintelligent but his
educational background is not suited for narrating a lengthy story.
On the other hand, it would not have been suitable to have a highly
educated narrator tell us about Ivan, because the educational and
the emotional distance between two would have been too great.
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First -person narration by Ivan and third person omniscient
narration were therefore not possible. Solzhenitsyn uses a form of
narration in One Day ----which is an ingenious variation of a
traditional Russian narrative form, the skaz. This technique is
widely employed in Russian folk tales, establishes an anonymous
narrator who is on the same social and educational level as the
protagonist and is able to transmit the main character’s actions
and thoughts, using the third-person singular and sometimes the
first person plural, but giving the impression to the reader that the
story is being told in first person by the protagonist. Indeed, in One
Day, the reader has the impression that Ivan is the narrator, but a
closer look will reveal that the most of the story is told in the third
person.
Solzhenitsyn uses beautifully the literary device of free
indirect discourse in the novel. This type of narrative is technically
known as erlebte rede, known in English as “narrated monologue”
Free indirect discourse is a way of writing in which a narrator
speaks in the third person but communicates a character’s private
thoughts. The narrator of the novel is not Shukhov. However the
narrator communicates Shukhov’s inner thoughts and desires
without differentiating them from his own.
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The episodes are arranged thematically around the three
main areas of concern for a typical prisoner: food work and the
eternal battle against the cruel camp authorities. Formally, the
episodes – one might properly call many of them vignettes- are
arranged in such a way that scenes describing the harsh camp
environment which is a threat to Ivan’s survival alternate with
episodes which depict his overcoming these threats, showing
Ivan’s small triumphs over the inhumane prison system.
The whole scenario is presented through a peasant Ivan
Denisovich Shukhov. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov has been
sentenced to a labor camp in the Soviet gulag system. He is
suspected of becoming a sleuth of the Germans when he is
captured by Germans as a prisoner of war during World War II. He
is innocent but becomes the victim of the communist system where
there is no way out but to suffer if you are convicted by the
government may be wrongly or deliberately. There is no status of
independent judiciary as we find in democracy. The communist
system is a typical centralization of all the powers in to one
authority, and as saying goes absolute power corrupts absolutely,
the communist states often become a hub of all types of
corruption.
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The novel starts with the waking of Shukhov at five AM in a
camp for political prisoners in Siberia. It is a freezing morning. He
is not well and lying in a bed for a little longer than his usual
schedule. For waking late, he is sent to guardhouse and given a
punishment of cleaning the floor. During the course of the day the
writer speaks of Shukhov’s squad, their working environment, their
physical hardships, the hostile weather, their allegiance to their
squad leader. Solzhenitsyn also details the methods adopted by
the prisoners for survival. The sole principal behind living is the
survival of the fittest.
Throughout the novel the writer tries to explore the effects of
such a forced imprisonment on the psychology of the common
human beings through various characters. The 104th is a labour
camp which has 24 members. Though almost all of them are
important because they are the part of the general design of
Solzhenitsyn but some of them are more important. These
characters are very crucial because it is only through these
characters Solzhenitsyn conveys his message of humanity and
faith, he differentiates between good and evil.
** Ivan Denishovich Shukhov : He is the protagonist of the novel.
The Writer uses him to show the pathetic conditions of life in a
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political Prisoners camp in a communist state. The readers are
shown the atrocities of the communist regime through his actions,
thoughts, feelings and his descriptions of the prison camp. The
writer has used him as a true Christian model also who is
accepting each incident patiently as a wish of God.
** Alyosha (Alyoshka): He is a Baptist. He propagates Christian
ideology by accepting the imprisonment as a wish of God. In spite
of all odds, he keeps The Bible with him secretly and reads it
continuously with all enthusiasm. He is presented to show the
importance of the faith in the life of human beings and the
determination of a communist state to curb it at any cost.
** Gopchik: He is a Ukrainian young, laborious man. He
commands a very high respect among most of the prisoners. He
is respected for his high standards of life. Shukhov has a special
feeling for him as he reminds him of his son. The inclusion of the
character of Gopchic is again the part of his design to show that
how the Communists were creating a great terror by punishing all
those who did not support them. Gopchic was punished for
bringing food to Ukrainian rebels.
** Captain Buinovsky: He was a former Soviet naval officer. He is
relatively a new comer in the camp. He is sentenced for taking a
gift while serving as a liaison officer on a British ship. He has to
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face many problems because being a former officer he cannot
accept the rulings of the warders so easily. Captain Buinovsky is
representing those ardent supporters of the communism who still
has faith in the communist ideology in spite of the fact that he has
been arrested wrongly and unfairly.
** Andrey Tiurin(Tyurin): He is the squad leader of the camp
104th has been in the camp for the 19 years Solzhenitsyn has
presented Tiurin in a better shape in the sense that he gives better
jobs to Shukhov . He is a part of the communist hierarchy and let
us knows many things about the functioning of the communist
system. It is interesting to note that Tiurin was arrested not for his
personal offence but because being a son of a kulak.
** Tsezar Markovich: Tsezar is important because he presents
many nationalities with him. He is a mixture of many nationalities.
He is a symbol of multiethnic character of Russia.
** The Limper: He is the mess hall orderly. He controls the
entrance of squads in to the mess hall and readily hits people in to
their heads. He is a symbol of the oppression and the insensitivity
of the communist system.
** Fetiukov(Fetyukov): Fetiukov is presented with a very low
view. He is the most dislikable character of the camp. He has
thrown away all his dignity. He shamelessly scrounges for bits of
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food and tobacco. He is a person who has been reduced to his
base desires. The purpose behind the creation of the character of
Fetiukov is not clear. He may be representing those people who
simply live without any dignity or self respect. Solzhenitsyn targets
through him, those people who have accepted the contemporary
system (communist) without any resistance
**Lieutenant Volkovoy: He is the security officer at the camp. The
root of his name Volk means a wolf. He represents the true
oppressive and revengeful nature of a communism. He sentences
Buinovsky to ten days in the cell when he talks about the legality
and true ideas of communism. He is so cruel that he compels the
prisoners to open their coats in the chilling air of the morning and
search them for extra under garments.
The composition of Ivan’s prison camp is equally interesting.
It contains a cross section of Russian society. There are prisoners
representing virtually every professional, social and ethnic group in
the Soviet Union: we find artists, intellectuals, criminals, peasants,
former government officials, officers, Ukrainians, Latvians,
Estonians, and gypsies (Caesar Markovich).
“This cross-section presentation of the Soviet society is a typical
characteristic of Solzhenitsyn’s writings.”(Scammell.1985, 70)
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If one looks, beyond the literal level of the novel, it becomes
clear that Solzhenitsyn not only wanted to present a realistic
description of life in a Siberian prison camp, but that he also
wanted the reader to understand that the camp – on an allegorical
level – was a representation of Stalinist Soviet Russia. At a deeper
level the novel is a scathing indictment of the Soviet system.
The novel brings forward the various methods adopted by
the authorities to dehumanize and make these people insensitive.
The prisoners were assigned numbers for easy identification. In
fact it was an attempt to dehumanize them. Ivan Denisovich’s
prisoner number was S -854.’ He is often called by his number
and not by the name as if he is not a living entity but only an
article. Each day the squad leader would receive the assignment
for the day. The supply of the food was not decided by their
physical requirements but according to how they performed.
Prisoners were forced to work. The mistake of any prisoner could
result in to punishment for the others.
The novel laid before the world that how millions of the
people viciously imprisoned for countless years on baseless
charges. The novel tells us in very clear terms that how the
innocent people have to face forced imprisonment in such
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totalitarian states for no reason. The only reason behind such
arrests and harassments was to create an atmosphere of terror
that people remain suppressed. Commenting on the close
relationship between communism and terror, Jean Marie Chauvier
writes:
“The terror is for Solzhenitsyn not something exclusively
connected with Stalinism or with some bureaucratic degeneration
or other. It is integral to regime and ideology that prevailed under
Lenin and Trotsky.”(Chauvier 1974: 76)
Disclosing the arbitrariness and the highhandedness of the
system Solzhenitsyn reveals through Tyurin that how he was
arrested. Tyurin says that how he was produced before the major,
and how major interrogated him. Solzhenitsyn writes:
“What do you mean, first class, you swine? Your father’s
kulak! Here are the papers from the Kamen! Your father’s a Kulak
and you ran away.”(Solzhenitsyn 1990: 69)
The above revelation from Tyurin is enough to show, how
people were arrested without any of their fault. He is expelled from
the ranks just because his father was a kulak. Exposing the
atmosphere of fear and terror Solzhenitsyn reveals through Tyurin
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that he had not written anything to his home for last two years to
hide his identity as a kulak knowing that it would land him as well
as his family in to trouble.
Sozhenitsyn further exposes that how people were arrested
on the fabricated grounds and were compelled to accept their
crimes forcefully. The novelist presents the reason behind the
arrest of Shukhov very sarcastically. He Writes:
“In his record it said Shukhov was in for treason. And it is
true he gave evidence against himself and said he’d surrendered
to the enemy with the intention of betraying his country, and came
back with instructions from the Germans. But just what he was
supposed to do for the Germans neither Shukhov nor the
interrogator could say. So they just left it at that and put down: On
instructions from Germans.” (Solzhenitsyn 1990:54)
It was all the story of a forceful confession. Solzhenitsyn
writes:
“The way Shukhov figured, it was very simple. If he didn’t
sign, he was as good as buried. But if he did, he would still go on
living as a while. So he signed.”(Solzhenitsyn: 1990:54)
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The real Story was all different. Elaborating the real story
Solzhenitsyn writes:
“It happened like this. In February of forty two his whole army
was cut off on the Northwestern Front. They did not send any food
by air- there just were not any planes. Then things got so bad that
they cut the hoofs of the dead horses, soaked them in water to
soften them up a little, and ate them. The Germans tracked them
down in the woods and rounded them up. Then he got away with
four others. They made their way through the forest and bogs and
got back to their own lines. And what they got there, a machine
gunner opened fire. Two of them were killed on the spot and
another died of their wounds. Only two of them could escape. If
they had any sense, they’d have said they got lost wandering in
the woods--- then nothing would have happened to them. But they
told the truth and said they have gotten away from Germans--------
but only two of them did not have a chance. It was quite clear they
said, they had fixed up their escape with the Germans, the
bastards. (Solzhenitsyn 1990:55)
The novel is full of such illustrations that how people were
imprisoned on the fictitious causes. At one another place in the
novel Solzhenitsyn writes:
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“There were five spies in every gang. But it was all phony. It
said they were spies in their records, but it was just they’d been
POW’s”. (Solzhenitsyn 1990:95)
Later, Solzhenitsyn’s case was supported by the various
World reports also, published on the atrocities committed by the
communist party in the Soviet Union. US News& World Report,
May19, 1986, writes;
“The gulags were used on a massive scale by Stalin. From
1936 to 1953 as many as 5 million people- peasants, dissidents,
ethnic minorities were swept in to the camps, many to be literally
worked to death. More than half a million people were imprisoned
for political crimes. The most common political charge was “anti-
Soviet agitation and propaganda”-any criticism, from public protest
to private letters.” (Horn, Miriam.1986: 37)
Criticizing the whole scenario, the well- known American
Sovietologist Adam Ulam wrote:
“the source and prime cause of political repression lies in the
excessive and unnatural politicization of the life of a nation: once
we overlook or minimize the sufferings of a human being because
he happens to be a reactionary priest or a rich peasant, we
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prepare the way for the persecution of political deviationists, then
of the people’s enemies, then of the of the people as a whole.”
(Ulam, Adam.1976:316)
Solzhenitsyn successfully brings before the world the cruel
and insensitive face of the Communism which is basically a
totalitarian state. The whole novel is an exposé of the inhuman
conditions prevailing in these concentration camps. Some of the
scenes of these camps are really pathetic. Describing the atrocities
committed to the prisoners, Solzhenitsyn writes at one place in the
novel:
“Warders quickly removed their gloves, told the men to open
their jackets and undo their shirts. Then they began to feel around
to see whether extra clothes had been put on against regulations.
Each prisoner was allowed to wear a shirt and a vest, and anything
extra had to come off. Anyone with extra clothing on had to strip it
off right there in the freezing cold.” (Solzhenitsyn 1990:27)
It is the height of the violation of the individual liberty and
privacy when even the under garments are checked out and the
prisoners are dictated what to wear, without taking in to
consideration the needs of an individual.
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There is no place for political ideals or rhetoric in the camp.
Though they are political prisoners but in fact they do not have any
such identity. The guards have unlimited power to search them
and punish them according to their will and not by any law. The
camp system of punishment is completely arbitrary and unfair as
we find in a normal dictatorial state. Bringing about the complete
arbitrariness and lawlessness prevailing in the system,
Solzhenitsyn presents a discussion between Captain Buinovsky
and Volkovoy. He writes:
“The Captain kicked up a fuss, just like he used to on
his ship—you have no right to strip people in the cold! You don’t
know the Article Nine of the Criminal Code!”
They had the right and they knew the article. You have still
lot to learn, my brother.
“You are not Soviet people”, the Captain kept on at
them.
“You are not Communists!”
Volkovoy could take the stuff about the criminal code, but this
made him mad. He looked black as thundercloud and snapped at
him:
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“Ten days’ solitary!” (Solzhenitsyn 1990:27)
Volkovoy’s differing response to Buinovsky’s charges reveals
Volkovoy’s self absorbed hypocrisy. The character of Volkovoy is
representing the cruel face of the regime. He personifies the
sadistic exercise of power for its own sake. Volkovoy uses his lash
for more than simply keeping order in the camp. He beats the
prisoners just too create an atmosphere of the fear, in the same
way as the Stalinist regime has killed many of the Soviet citizens
just to crush their democratic nature. Highlighting the terror of the
Stalin’s regime, The US News and World Report, May 19, 1986
explains:
“For those who can’t be broken, one other punishment
remains. Troublemakers may be sent to psychiatric hospitals and
given huge doses of mind-altering drugs that cause convulsions,
raging temperatures, acute pain and such long term effects as loss
of vision and paralysis. Such a cure for a rebellion rarely fails.”
There is one more interesting thing is to be noted here, that
the camp life has brought all these prisoners to their animalistic
level. The camp life has made them like wild beasts: they
scrounge for scraps of food, stand naked out in the fields during
the body search, and possesses no greater goal in their life that
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mere survival. The entire camp emerges before us as a zoo filled
with a variety of beasts. That’s why Solzhenitsyn ends his next
novel, Cancer Ward with the scene of a zoo.
Solzhenitsyn wants to point out that almost whole of the
society is suffering at the hands of the communist regime and
living under an unknown constant fear. Those who are outside the
prison are apprehensive of their possible arrest. Irony is that even
those officials who are carrying out all these orders are not sure
about their fate. They also have to share all these hardships along
with these prisoners.
Shukhov is punished for getting late though he is sick and
unable to get up from his bed. Generally he wakes up early in the
morning to help others or to earn some extra money. This fighting
spirit of Shukhov is the most interesting feature of his character.
He is an unyielding spirit with a lot of self respect. The most
memorable scenes of the novel are those where he demonstrates
a tremendous determination, and strength to endure the hardships
of imprisonment and dehumanization in a communist state.
Shukhov has his own code of living. It is extremely important to
Shukhov that he would not let him down like Fetiuov because that
could lead him towards inhumanity and death.
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As we know more about Shukhov’s moral upstanding
character, it becomes more difficult to understand the logic behind
his arrest. He is a man who would never commit any mistake
deliberately. This reveals only the arbitrary nature of the justice
prevailing in the system which shows that people are punished
regardless of their guilt or innocence. Shukhov’s punishment for
being sick reinforces the sense that the system has completely
rotten. We find a typical irresponsibility prevailing in the system,
where officials are responsible towards the authority only, which is
the typical quality of an authoritarian rule. His crime of being sick is
not an act of free will, but still he is punished. Theoretically people
are punished for their deliberate negligence towards their duty, so
that they become responsible for their work, and refrain from
harmful actions. But when people are punished for those actions
which are beyond ones control, we can understand only one logic
behind such actions that we want to create an atmosphere of fear,
the bare necessity of a dictatorial rule.
Solzhenitsyn further reveals that the communist ideology of
providing bread to all is not sufficient. A man needs more to live
than only the full stomach. He says, existence without dignity is
worthless. In fact, the loss of human dignity will also diminish the
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will and the capacity to survive. Compromises are certainly
necessary, but there is a vast moral gap between Ivan and
Fetyukov. Fetyukov will do anything for a little more food and he is
properly referred to as scavenging animal. Ivan in contrast, will
swindle and bully, at times, but basically, he relies on his
resourcefulness to achieve the same goal. He does not lick bowls,
he does not take or give bribes and he is differential when
necessary, but he never crawls.
The novel One Day…presents Communism as a system
which is arbitrary and devoid of basic human rights. According to
the United Nation, human rights are:
“right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, equality
before law, social, cultural and economic rights such as right to
participate in culture, the right to food, the right to work, and the
right to education.”(Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
1948)
Solzhenitsyn presents before us through the novel that the
Soviet concept of human right was different from the concept
prevalent in the West. According to Western legal theory, it is the
individual who is the beneficiary of human rights which are to be
asserted against the government. The Soviets rejected the
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Western concept of the ‘rule of law’ as the belief that law should be
more than just the instrument of politics; the Soviet view on rights
was criticized for considering the Marxist- Leninist ideology above
natural law. It is very true that people cannot avail proper human
rights in any totalitarian state. (Lambelet 1989. 61-62)
The title of the novel is also suggestive as well as
important. The title of the novel shows “Ivan Denisovich” as the
protagonist of the novel rather than as “Shukhov”. Solzhenitsyn
reinforces the importance of remembering the personal identities in
a totalitarian regime where the authorities are all determined to
crush the personal identity of the all citizen. They are not even
ready to call them by their names (As these prisoners are called by
their numbers and not by their names).
Solzhenitsyn leads us to expect a story about an individual
character with a clear social identity. The writer addresses one
person with two different identities, First as Ivan Denisovich as in
the title and then Shukhov as in the narrative. It implies that there
are two different Denisoviches. Shukhov’s life in the camp has
changed him so that he is no longer a person he used to be. He is
only a number in the camps documents: S- 854.
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Solzhenitsyn presents emphatically that the transition from
an identity to a meaningless combination of letters and numbers is
the final culmination of such dictatorial regimes. It is really
interesting that the text refers the last name Shukhov most of the
time instead of the first names Ivan Denisovich. In Russian society,
by addressing someone by his first name and Patronymic is cordial
and respectful. The Communist regime tried to eradicate this form
of address with the sole aim to eliminate the individual identity of
the citizen to create a so called classless society. The soviet
manner of addressing people as “comrade” followed by their last
name was an attempt to replace the old formula with a new one
better adapted to a class- less utopia.
Solzhenitsyn puts before us that how the Communist
system works. By force, ultimately the system succeeds in
changing the mindset of the people. The workers have left the
middleclass household far behind and their work site has become
their life- in exactly the way the Soviet regime has intended. The
fact that Shukhov is closer to his fellow inmates now than his own
family illustrates the early Soviet ideal of eliminating middle class
family life and making a worker care more about the international
working class than about his own family and clan.
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Solzhenitsyn Further reveals through the character of Ivan
Denisovich that no authoritarian rule can break the spirit of those
people who has got self respect and want to live with dignity. At
one point in the novel Solzhenitsyn writes:
“Then Shukhov took his cap off his shaven head—
however cold it was, he would never eat with it on. He stirred up
the cold gruel and took a quick look to see what was in his bowl.”
(Solzhenitsyn 1990:12)
This account of Shukhov’s breakfast in section one shows
his determination to live with dignity despite the degradation of
camp life. Similarly the stirring also reinforces the fact that he
yearns to keep any shred of control over his existence, even if he
knows it is futile. He stirs, despite knowing the fact that stirring will
only show him what fate has brought him.
Removing his cap is also symbolic in the sense that it
reminds him about the existence of some civilized world outside
the camp. Camp regulations do not require prisoners to remove
caps at meals. The gesture becomes more important when we
look at the hostilities of the weather. It is very cold there and to
remove the cap is very painful for Shukhov. But even then he
always does it with the feeling that civilized people remove their
150
caps before eating. The act of removing the cap provides him the
opportunity to assert his humanity. Shukhov’s attachment to this
piece of civilized etiquette shows us that the atrocities of the camp
life are not entirely successful in removing the basic dignity and
humanity of the prisoners. Levitzky writes:
“We feel in him a man of goodwill whose spirit is not filled
with bitterness, despite the crying injustice of punishment despite,
too the inhuman conditions of life in the so-called corrective labour
camps.”(Levitzky, 1971.300)
Survival is a task which needs Ivan’s constant, simple
attention. Abstractions, esoteric discussions on religion or on art
are irrelevant and counter-productive. Caesar Markovich can
survive only as long as his packages arrive. The Captain, if he
survives solitary confinement, will have to give up his unrealistic
ideas about communism and his over bearing manner if he wants
to live. Alyosha the Baptist is by the very nature of his faith, more
interested in an afterlife than he is in physical survival during this
life time. Clearly Fetyukov and all likewise who lacks the basic
essence of human beings will not live long.
It is a marvelous work which not only exposes the ugly face
of Communism but also teaches us what it means by a good
151
human being. The novel reveals that in the face of degrading
hatred, where life is reduced to a bowl of gruel and a rare
cigarette, hope and dignity prevail. Though the camp is a place
filled with suffering and misery, the men continue to exhibit acts of
humanity in their day to day lives that slip by in a haze of despair.
The only way that these men survive this vicious life is by grasping
on to the little bits of kindness that can be seen in the trivial actions
and events during their day. The prisoners’ dedication to uplift
each other is inspiring and is a lesson and example to every
human being of the power of human kindness.
Ivan combines all the qualities necessary to survive. He
works for himself and his comrades but not for the authorities. He
does not rely on the outside help, but his own skill and craftiness.
He follows only sensible orders and neglect absurd ones. He has
faith, but it is a faith designed to help him cope with the realities of
this life, not one which exhausts itself in dogmatic theological
debate. Ivan believes in the strength and the dignity of the simple
Russian worker and peasant without being a doctrinaire
Communist. He is, with some lapses, a compassionate human
being who looks at his fellow prisoners with sympathy and
152
understanding. He is liked by most of his fellow prisoners and
respected for these qualities. Terras Victor observes:
“Ivan Denisovich is a survivor, not because he will steal
from, or inform on his fellow prisoners, but because he has
retained his self respect and human dignity.” ( Terras 1991: 592)
Solzhenitsyn reveals that though communism tried to create
an impression that their economic system of controlled economy
would solve all the problems but in fact the system was destroying
the traditional economy. To make things more explicit he cites the
example of his own village.
Solzhenitsyn presents a very pathetic and gloomy scene of
the Russian village and the village economy under the Stalinist
system. Here this thing is to be noted that whenever we use the
phrase “The Stalinist system” we mean the ultimate destiny of a
true communist state. Through the device of letters back and forth
between Shukhov and his wife, the readers learn about the
deleterious effect of the Stalinists system on kolkhozes or the
collective farms. Plots are divided and subdivided; crops are
planted right up to the back of cottages. People are shown leaving
their villages to work somewhere else and leaving their ancestral
occupations. Solzhenitsyn writes:
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“The thing Shukhov didn’t get at all was what his wife wrote
about how not a single new member had come to the Kolkhoz
since the war. All the youngsters were getting out as best they
could----- to factories in the towns or to the peat fields. Half the
Kolkhozniks had not come back after the war, and those who had
would not have anything to do with the Kolkhoz. They lived there
but earned their money outside.”(Solzhenitsyn 1990:32)
The main reason behind this situation was the collectivization
of the agriculture by Stalin. Under collectivization, Stalin ordered
that all grain which the Kulaks produced would be given to
Bolsheviks. The kulaks would also have to give up the land that
they were entitled to after the abolition of the serfdom in 1861 and
let the Soviet government become their landlord. Not only that the
kulaks had to give up their grain, they had to sell it to the
government at very low price. Dekulakization forced the lower
class peasants to leave their ancestral occupation of agriculture.
As a result, a severe famine occurred from 1932 -33.
Jonathan Lewis cites a very interesting incident in his book to
expose the real benevolent face of the communism. Mykola Pishy,
a young kulak remembers a requisition squad approaching her
mother to seize whatever food they had left:
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“Please leave us something. We have got five children in the
family. They’ll die.” The leader of the squad callously replied, “I
don’t care about your children. I care about my party.”
( Whitehe 1990: 66-7).
There is no doubt that collectivization was a failure but one
must wonder as to what would possess a leader like Stalin to
enforce such a policy. An eminent critic of Stalin, De J, Alex
comments:
“Stalin was so power hungry that he wanted total control over
agricultural production and make it more prosperous. On the
contrary, Stalin may have been worried about a possible peasant
revolt so he enforced collectivization so he could have a total
control over his people. (Alex. 1986, 237)
By presenting the picture of a Russian village, Solzhenitsyn
is making the point that the hopelessness which is pervading in the
camp is not limited to the camp only but rather is a phenomenon of
whole Soviet society. The traditional agrarian economy of the
Russia was being destroyed.
One important point is to be noted here that Solzhenitsyn is
indicating towards a general shortage of foods in the newly created
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U.S.S.R. The communist regime gave more thrust on the
development of the factories and in doing that the agriculture was
ignored. Before collectivization, Russia had been the “bread
basket of Europe”. Afterwards, the Soviet Union became a net
importer of grain, unable to produce enough food to feed its own
population.(Steel 2002: Chapter 6.)
Solzhenitsyn points out that the communist system was
faulty and impractical. There are two unredeemable and crucial
flaws of Soviet-style socialism. First, socialism is based on
coercion and second it must rely on a collective lie.
In a socialist state generally the ownership of the means of
the production are controlled by the state. All economic activities
and decision making and activity must be subordinate to and under
the direction of the state. The only way to ensure this
subordination is by force. Coercion must be used to ensure
compliance with central economic directives. And to Solzhenitsyn
the use of coercion corrupts the user of coercion and debilitates
those coerced. Its unbridled use in all aspects of life is not
consistent with spiritual development. The novel One Day -----is a
detailed expose of the same.
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Solzhenitsyn presents Ivan Denisovich in contrast to the so
called benevolent communist regime which boast of taking care of
the down trodden. The writer presents the pathetic conditions of
the inhabitants of the camp in a very sarcastic way. In the very
beginning of the novel he presents that the prisoners were not only
living under very inhuman conditions but even they were not given
sufficient food to survive. They were compelled to lick from the
unwashed dishes and bowls left in the kitchen and dining hall like
dogs and animals. He writes:
“by going around to the store rooms……by going to the
mess- hall to pick up the bowls from the tables and take them in
piles to the dish washer-there was always a chance of getting
something to eat, although there were too many others with the
same idea, and what is worse, if you found something left in a
bowl, you could not resist starting to lick it out.”
(Solzhenitsyn 1990: 6)
Later various studies showed that the starvation was not
limited to the concentration camps only, rather a large population
under the regime of Stalin was facing the problem of insufficient
food. Kenez Peter writes:
157
“Starvation was rampant and between1932-33 the Soviet
Union suffered a cataclysmic famine. The government did nothing
to assist the starving, what little grain was harvested was brought
to the cities: in effect the regime traded the peasants for the
workers.” (Peter. 1985.100)
The insufficient quantity and low quality of food is mentioned
throughout the novel. The petty fights which take place in the mess
are enough to show the inhuman conditions prevailing in the
consecration camps. Referring to all this mismanagement, at one
point in the novel, Solzhenitsyn speaks through Shukhov:
“The amount of oats Shukhov fed to horses when he was a
boy, and he never thought he’d long for a handful himself one
day”. (Solzhenitsyn 1990:60)
The character of Fetyukov is also an example that how the
scarcity of food can degrade a human being to the level of an
animal. It is really very pathetic to see him licking dishes and
bowls. Solzhenitsyn writes:
“ Fetyukov came through the barracks and he was crying. He
was all hunched up and there was blood on his lips. So he must’ve
158
gotten beat up again for trying to scrounge somebody’s bowl.”
(Solzhenitsyn 1990:128)
The mention of the quality of the food is equally important
because it is often reiterated by the communists that they take
care of all the human beings with the sole motto to uplift the
downtrodden. At one place in the novel Solzhenitsyn writes:
“After the gruel there was magara porridge. It had
frozen in to a single, solid lump, and Shukhov had to break it in to
little pieces. It was not only that the porridge was cold, it was
tasteless, it was just grass, only yellow and looked like
millet.”(Solzhenitsyn 1990:18)
Solzhenitsyn presents very adroitly that how a communist
state can act revengefully to those who don’t fall in their line or
dare to oppose their policies.
Solzhenitsyn demonstrates through repeated examples, the
ways in which internment in a special camp robs the individual of
his humanity. The power of these examples is increased by
Solzhenitsyn’s repeated use of understatements. For Shukhov and
his fellow prisoners, this loss of humanity has become so common
place as to cease to outwardly upset them. For example, when the
159
guard taunts Shukhov about the way in which he washes the floor,
saying:
“Didn’t you ever see your wife scrubbing the floor, pig?”
Sukhov responds somewhat sarcastically, saying,” They took me
away from my woman, Comrade Warder, in, 41. I can’t even
remember what she was like.” (Solzhenitsyn 1990:14-15)
The response is really very pathetic and enough to show that
how Shukhov is missing his wife and family all these days. The
statement and admission that he has forgotten what his wife was
like is more disturbing than any other depiction of Shukhov missing
his wife because it demonstrates the ways in which his long prison
sentence has affected him and robbed him of basic human
responses. At one another point Solzhenitsyn raises the same
question but this time more poignantly that how this camp system
has destroyed the basic human spirit of these prisoners. They
were live but without any life. They were all disappointed and
dejected. They had lost all hopes. Even they were not interested in
writing letters to their family members. Solzhenitsyn writes:
“Writing now was like throwing stones in to a bottomless pit.
They fell down and disappeared and no sound came back. What
was the point in telling them in what gang you have worked in and
160
what was your boss like?” Now you had more in common with that
Latvian Kilgas than with your own family (Solzhenitsyn 1990:32)
The above statement is very suggestive. It does not mean
uselessness of writing but at a larger level it is the uselessness of
the life. His attitude towards life has completely changed, in the
duration of the last ten years which he has spent in the various
prison camps. We can understand the dismal mood of Shukhov
that how the home has become a distant place in his mind. He
rarely thinks about his wife and children. He is not angry or
resentful towards his family. They have simply vanished from his
consciousness. They have sunk without a trace in to the
bottomless pool of Shukhov’s heart. This despair and gloom is not
pertaining with Shukhov as an individual but rather representing
the mood of the whole of the generation. They have lost all hopes
of freedom and since there is no meaning behind their survival.
“Indeed, a horrendous toll can be exacted on mind and body by
arduous work, extreme cold, near starvation, medical neglect,
systematic beatings, and threats of death, isolation and promises
of release in return for confession.”
(US News & World Report, May 19, 1986:37)
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Throughout the novel Solzhenitsyn stresses again and again
the theme of freedom with confinement. Solzhenitsyn reveals that
the authorities in a Communist society control the prisoners so
completely that ultimately they lose their own identity. At one point
Shukhov says:
“Even a prisoner’s thoughts were not free but kept coming
back to the same thing, kept turning the same things over again.
Will they find that bread in the mattress? Will the medics put me on
the sick list this evening? Will they put Captain in the cooler or
not?” (Solzhenitsyn 1990:31)
Commenting on the situation, Clive, Geoffrey asserts:
“Ivan Denisovich is the everyman of the Soviet Prison System.”
(Clive, Geoffrey. 1972, 143)
It is very useful to refer the concept of the Panopticon to
understand these disciplinary structures. The Panopticon is an
architectural device described by the eighteenth- century
philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, as a way of arranging people in
such a way that, for example, in a prison, it is possible to see all of
the inmates without the observer being seen and without any of
the prisoners having access to one another. Michel Foucault
describes it in the following way in The Eye of Power:
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“A perimeter building in the form of a ring, at the centre of
this a tower, pierced by large windows opening on to the inner face
of the ring. The outer building is divided into cells each of which
traverses the whole thickness of the building. These cells have two
windows, one opening onto the inside, facing the windows of the
central tower, the other, outer one allowing daylight to pass
through the whole cell. All that is than needed is to put an overseer
in the tower and place in each of the cells a lunatic, a patient, a
convict, a worker or a schoolboy. The back lighting enables one to
pick out from the central tower the little captive silhouettes in the
ring of cells”. (Foucault, 1980: 147)
From this analysis of a particular way of organizing the
spatial arrangements of prisons, schools, and factories to enable
maximum visibility, Foucault argues that a new form of internalized
disciplinary practice occurs: one is forced to act as if one is
constantly being surveyed even when one is not. Thus this form of
spatial arrangement entails a particular form of power relation and
restriction of behaviors.
Solzhenitsyn puts before us one another feature of the
communist system which is an important theme of the novel, that
how people are unhoused in the communist system. The beds
163
have become their home. They hide all their personal belongings
(if they “have any) in their beds. Solzhenitsyn writes:
“He pulled the heavy mattresses back, and then hid the
things there.”
The novel is full of such instances where we find various
characters hiding their various belongings in their beds. The theme
is developed more elaborately in his next two novels.
The system is that much insensitive towards human
sufferings that only when thermometer reaches -410C the
prisoners were exempted from outdoor labour. It means that up to
-41c the weather conditions were considered quite conductive to
work. To take notice of the types of these works is also important.
It would reveal that these works are meant only to keep these
prisoners busy with not any serious work but with a malign desire
to make suffer all these people who were suspected to oppose the
Communist system in one or other way. Through Shukhov,
Solzhenitsyn reveals the futility of these works, he writes:
“Today was a fateful day: they wanted to transfer their gang-
104-from the construction of workshops to a new project, the
‘Socialist Community Centre’. The Centre was nothing but a barren
field covered with snow drifts, and before anything could be done
164
there, they would have to dig holes, erect posts and put up barbed
wire between the posts- to prevent themselves from
escaping.”(Solzhenitsyn 1990:7)
Commenting on the situation, J.M. Chauvier rightly observes:
“One Day... is, in fact, an allegory, with the camp as a
microcosm of Stalinist society, a concentration of the essence of
the system of the “socialist community”, which here takes the form
of a building-site where slaves are set to work.
(Jean Marie. Solzhenitsyn: p.56)
Though communists often talk about basic human justice but
Solzhenitsyn says, the Communist system is inhuman in practice.
There is no mercy even for the sick. Shukhov is not well. He is
very weak and unable to work. In any human system the patient
would be allowed to rest till he is fit to work. But it is not so in a
communist state. The writer exposes the communist sensitivity
through Shukhov that he is punished for not waking up in time in
spite of his sickness. Shukhov is sent to guardhouse and forced to
clean it.
The writer presents the brutality and cruelty of the system
through the mutual talks and dialogue of the characters. For
example Kilgas argues that though Shukhov has been in camps
165
for eight years, they were not special camps, out of which no one
ever come alive. Shukhov remembers his seven years in the
North, where any squad that failed to fill its timber cutting quota
was forced to stay in the forest after dark in such a hostile
atmosphere.
In the due course of the novel, Solzhenitsyn reveals that it
was a completely authoritarian rule. Exposing the dictatorial nature
of the communist regime Solzhenitsyn writes very sarcastically at
one point in the novel:
“If it is right overhead,” the captain shot back, “that means
it’s one o’ cloak, not twelve.”
“How come?” Shukhov asked. “Any old man can tell you the
sun is highest at noon.”
“That’s what the old guys say!” The captain snapped.
“But since then, there’s has been a law passed and now the
sun is highest at one.”
“Who passed the law?”
“The Soviet Government!” (Solzhenitsyn 1990:52)
This exchange between Buynovsky and Shukhov is really
very amusing. Through this dialogue the writer reveals the absurd
pompousness of the Soviet government. The remark shows that
166
how a communist rule is ready to challenge even the rule of the
nature. It is the height of the dictatorship. Through Buynovsky,
Solzhenitsyn points out towards authoritarian tendency of a
communist state. Buyonosvky implies that the Soviet state
believes itself all powerful, able not only to control the lives of its
citizens but also the very laws of nature. The writer indicates
towards the true nature of the regime who even wants to control
even the movements of the nature and any disagreement with the
authorities could land you in another sentence. Drawing our
attention to the hardships of these sentences, about one of these
punishments- a sentence to a cooler cell. He writes:
“The fellows from 104 had built the place themselves and
they knew how it looked ---stone walls a concrete floor and no
window. There was a stove, but that was only enough to melt the
ice off the walls and make puddles on the floor you slept on the
bare boards and your teeth chattered all night. You got six ounces
of bread a day and they only gave you hot gruel every third day.
If you had ten days in the cells here and set them out to the
end, it meant you’d be a wreck for the rest of your life. You got TB
and you’d never be out of the hospitals as long as you lived. And
167
the fellows who did fifteen days were dead and buried.”
(Solzhenitsyn 1990:133)
One more irony of the Communist system is exposed here.
The motto Work with dignity which is considered the basis of a
Communist system is also violated here. It appears that for the
camp officials and the Soviet Government the concept of work is
not sacrosanct. Work is just a commodity for them. In many ways,
this understanding of work as a measurable commodity is used as
a means of oppression against the prisoners. Work is measured
and distributed as are necessities like food and rest time.
This thing is exploited by Tyurin and such officials for their
own benefits. Commodities, foods and tobacco are used by the
prisoner to bribe others and specially the senior officials. By
showing all these happening Solzhenitsyn also reveals the
corruption prevailing in the Communist system. One example of
this the women whom Tiurin helped in from a hard labor camp to a
tailoring shop, though it is done for the good of the women but it is
done through the wrong means.
Solzhenitsyn exposes the rampant corruption in the system
very systematically. He talks through Shukhov that not only the
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ration which was distributed in the prisoners was the low quality
but was also short in weight. He writes:
“He looked at the rations, turning it, weighing it in his hands
as he moved, to see if it was the full pound due him…and though
he had never had a chance to weigh a single one of them on a
scale and he was always too shy to stick up for his rights, he and
every other prisoner had known a long time that the people who
cut up and issued your bread would not last long if they gave you
honest rations. Every ration was short. The only question was –by
how much?” (Solzhenitsyn 1990:19)
The theme of the corruption in the system is a recurring
theme in the novel. We find so many examples in the novel that
the system has completely rotten. The writer says in the Ust-Izhma
camp, Shukhov used to get packages from his home. Later
Shukhov advised her wife not to send them. He writes:
“But he wrote to his wife and told her not to send any more
because there was not much left by the time it reached him. Better
keep it for the kids.” (Solzhenitsyn 1990:109)
It is not painful that he is not receiving any packages from
his home but we feel pain for him when he desires he could.
Solzhenitsyn writes:
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“All the same every time anybody in his gang got a
package—and this was nearly every day, he felt a kind of pang
inside because it wasn’t him. Though he himself has stopped his
wife from sending him any gift, still he sometimes had the crazy
idea, somebody might run to him one day and say: “Shukhov, what
are you waiting for? You have got a package.”
(Solzhenitsyn 1990:109)
We can sense the pathos behind the statement of Shukhov
that how much he had been longing for his family of which he had
been deprived without any of his fault.
Solzhenitsyn reveals through the character of Shukhov that
though the Communist system is all determined to destroy the
individual identity of the prisoners but even then it is unable to
break people like Shukhov. Shukhov does not take work as a
punishment but rather he starts enjoying his work. For Shukhov
works primary value is, as an act. Shukhov feels a sort of self
respect in completing the work satisfactorily. He feels a sort of
pride in performing work successfully. His mental exertions in
planning and laying the blocks in the wall demonstrates his
involvement and skill. Shukhov has ironically found a new source
of pride. In an atmosphere where you have lost the very meaning
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of ownership or personal belongings, a brick wall indirectly
satisfies his long nurtured desire of something of which he can
claim as of his own. The brick wall provides him the much needed
moral support. He can look at it with pride and he can see his self
worth reflected in it. Shukhov is so much involved with the work
that he takes personal pains in completing the task. In choosing to
continue working even he was supposed to –and when many
others did- stop, Shukhov asserts his own will upon the work and
demonstrates that he is not completely controlled by the camp
authorities.
In the end for Shukhov, all work is about survival. He knows
one thing very clearly that he must work as much as possible- in
the evening to gain enough food and favors to survive. Therefore,
work beyond what is required of him by the camp is necessary to
ensure his survival. One another feature of Shukhov’s character is
important to note that Shukhov must not preserve his body but
also his mind and spirit, during his term in the camp. Taking pride
in his work provides him the much needed human dignity and self
respect to remain human under these inhuman conditions.
In presenting Shukhov working even after the end of the
work day to finish the wall, Solzhenitsyn is not only condemning
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the communist system but also raising certain basic questions
about the implementation of these policies by the Stalinists. In a
communist system the worker is paramount, but here it appears
that work is being given more importance then the workers. The
workers are only being exploited in the name of service to the
society. Solzhenitsyn depicts the workers solidarity by presenting
Shukhov and Senka working together even after the scheduled
time. Shukhov and Senka are idealized views of the communist
worker that was originally heart of the communist ideology.
For Solzhenitsyn, the tragedies of individual men and women
as found in forced labor camps are not decreed by fate or by
heaven. They were the product of the system. Trotsky provided a
central theoretical foundation for this resort to forced labour.
Trotsky propagates:
“We are now heading towards the type of labour that is
socially regulated on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory for
the whole country, compulsory for every worker. This is the basis
of socialism…The militarization of labour, in this fundamental
sense of which I have spoken, is the indispensable basic method
for the organization of our labour forces…Is it true that compulsory
labour is always unproductive?...This is the most wretched and
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miserable liberal prejudice: chattel slavery, too was
productive…Compulsory serf labour did not grow out of the feudal
lords’ ill will. It was (in this time) a progressive phenomenon…”
( Deutscher. 1954, 338-9)
Solzhenitsyn then depicts that how the system has
broken the solidarity of the workers and that how they have
become puppets at the hands of the authorities. The authorities
which govern this system depend upon the mistrust among the
workers. In effect they are subverting the very foundation upon
which the communist ideology is built. The Marxist concept of
revolution is based upon the strength of united workers.
Solzhenitsyn describes the Communist society as in the form of
the Stalinist prison camp system where workers have lost their
significance and are being exploited. They are in need of another
revolution to free its workers from oppression. Man’s inhumanity to
Man is a recurring theme in almost all the writings of Solzhenitsyn.
The theme of zek against zek is repeated by Solzhenitsyn
again and again throughout the novel, from his depiction of
squealers whose throats are cut, to the competition for food and
cigarettes, to the antagonism between squads and columns.
Solzhenitsyn feels that this antagonism though contrary to the
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basic ideology of communism, is deliberately created by the
system so that they can control them easily.
Solzhenitsyn continues the theme of finding freedom through
the act of working throughout the novel. The prisoners are angry
that they are forced to wait and return to camp so late in the
evening not only that they have lost their free time during the day
but more specifically “there would be no time now to do anything of
their own in camp.” though this is a forced labor camp but the
attitude of Shukhov towards work is different that he no longer
takes work as a punishment but rather uses it as an only creative
activity in the confinement .Solzhenitsyn and his protagonist find
merit in the act of work though Solzhenitsyn has always
condemned the imposition of work through force.
As the day progresses Solzhenitsyn tries to reveal some
more naked truth of the functioning of a communist state through
the activities of Shukhov and his observations. Solzhenitsyn
makes effective use of understatements in the later part of the
novel. Solzhenitsyn uses simple, factual statements and in doing
so communicates the extreme effects of camp life on the life of
Shukhov and other prisoners. Shukhov had a deep love for his
family but the hard and insensitive life of the camp had compelled
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him to forget all those pleasant moments of his life. Solzhenitsyn
writes:
“There were fewer and fewer occasions to recall the village
of Temgenovo and the hut where he and his family lived. Here, life
pursued him from reveille to lights out, and there was no free time
for reminiscing.”(Solzhenitsyn 1990:134)
In Shukhov and his fellow prisoners Solzhenitsyn creates a
depiction of humanity in extremes. In their Extreme situation,
truths, emotions, and meanings become more pronounced. The
forced imprisonment had completely changed their mentality. The
survival has become the sole motto for them. Shukhov does not
hope for any immediate release or an easy prison term. His all
efforts are meant for survival. In the given circumstances and
hostile atmosphere it is of utmost important to survive. Ten days in
the guardhouse with poor rations can make a man so sick that he
will never recover to be released. Survival is the only thing for
which Shukhov can hope for, and that is the only thing which is
keeping him alive for such a long time in such an inhuman
environment.
Through Shukhov, Solzhenitsyn ascertains the value of faith
in the life of a common man. Solzhenitsyn says that one’s faith is
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the most crucial in rising against any injustice and to keep you
alive in difficulties. That’s why, all the authoritarian rules, whatever
name they may assume communism or socialism always try to
destroy this very essence of human being.
Solzhenitsyn is completely against the atheism of the
communism. According to him, the spiritual development is the
most important for a human being. Rather the meaning of Human
Existence lies in the spiritual development and not in the
attainment of human comfort, material well being or even
happiness. As stated in his Harvard commencement speech:
“If, as claim d by humanism, man were born only to be happy,
he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death,
his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total
engrossment of everyday life, not a search for the best ways to
obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has
to be the fulfillment of a permanent earnest duty so that one’s life
journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: “to
live life as a better human being than one started it.”
(Berman, 1980, 19)
This quest for spiritual development in the confines of a
material world is a theme in the most of Solzhenitsyn’s works. This
176
theme is also explored in A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovch. In
the end of the novel, Alyoshka says to Shukhov:
“Ivan Denisovich, you must not pray for somebody to send
you a package or foe an extra helping of gruel. Things that people
set store by are base in the sight of the Lord. You must pray for the
things of the spirit so that the Lord will take evil things from our
hearts.” (Solzhenitsyn 1990:140)
The communist used to consider religion as a negative factor
for the development of human beings but Solzhenitsyn points out
through the character of Shukhov that true happiness lays in the
spiritual development and not in acquiring materialistic pleasures.
Marx used to see religion as opium and a constraint in seeing the
truth. Contrary to it, Solzhenitsyn asserted the importance of faith.
The character of Shukhov is evolved in the company of Alyoshka,
the Baptist. In the end of the novel we find Shukhov a changed
man. In the beginning of the novel we find Shukhov a very
ordinary person doing all the woks out of the greed of getting
something in return but in the end of the novel Shukhov has
become a better human being. He appears helping others not in
the hope of receiving something but with the sole motto of helping
others. Shukhov is not thoroughly religious, but he experiences a
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moral rebirth during his theological conversation with Alyoshka.
After this conversation, Shukhov performs his first truly generous
act in the novel; he gives one of his precious biscuits to Alyoshka.
This gift to Alyoshka is selfless, not calculated. This is the first
illustration in the novel when we find Shukhov as a giver, doing
something without any calculation. Solzhenitsyn conveys the
message, that how he has become a new person after suffering a
lot, in the company of Alyoshka, the Baptist.
He has used the character of Alyoshka to show the other
ironies of a communist state. People are forced to hide their faith
and beliefs, for example, Alyoshka, the Baptist, has to hide his
note book in which he has copied half of the New Testament in the
wall and he can read it only secretly. The devout Alyoshka
continues to pray though it is forbidden. The statement that
“Alyoshka was a champion at one thing.” gives an idea of how he
is seen by the rest of the work gang. The people are made
helpless without any faith. Asserting the importance of the faith in
human-beings life, Solzhenitsyn used to say, he could survive in
such hostile circumstances just because of his strong faith in God.
This theme is developed more extensively in his novel, The First
Circle.
178
The loss of religion, which might otherwise provide a
panacea for the hopelessness of the camps, is another example of
Stalinist system’s abuse not only of human bodies but also of
human souls. Solzhenitsyn writes:
“There, at one table, before dipping in his spoon, a young
man was crossing himself. That meant a western Ukrainian and a
new arrival. As for the Russians, they had even forgotten which
hand to cross themselves with.” (Solzhenitsyn 1990:16)
Solzhenitsyn raises the question of importance of faith in
someone’s life. He negated the very base of the Communist
ideology.
“At its roots, Marxism-Leninism is atheistic materialistic.
Marxism denied the existence and the reality of any deity. Marx
explicitly distinguished his communism from previous “utopian”,
religious or ethical socialism. In his early writings Marx viewed
religion as a deliberate distraction meant to lead the oppressed to
divert their attention to what viewed as fabricated otherworldly
concerns rather than the address the exploitation that resulted
from capitalism and previous class based models of society such
as feudalism and slave society.” (Raines 2002:8)
179
Contrary to the Marxism, Solzhenitsyn asserts again and
again that true human happiness cannot be achieved without faith
(religion).
The Christian faith is rooted in the belief that God created
everything. According to Christian belief, God has a plan for his
creation, and therefore there is no need to be pessimistic. At first,
this Christian view appears an unlikely fit with Solzhenitsyn’s
prison-camp based novel. But then in the due course of the novel
we find many examples through which Sozhenitsyn appears
discussing the importance of faith in the life of an ordinary human
being. In one such instance, while Ivan Denisovich is working, he
asks his captain about moon and its phrases. Shukhov tells the
officer:
“Where I come from, they used to say God breaks up the old
moon to make stars (Solzhenitsyn 1990:116) The captain is
amused and calls Shukhov a savage for believing in God. Shukhov
is surprised by the response and answers:“How can anybody not
believe in God when it thunders?”(Solzhenitsyn 1990:116)
The nature of evil, from the Christian stand point, is that all
evils come from man’s sin. This makes evil a personal force, rather
than something abstract. Schmemann describes the Christian idea
180
of evil as a fall. He states that evil is “this fall from on high and the
horror, grief and suffering it evokes”(41).Evil or sin is controlled by
the individual. Each person has the ability to choose between the
right and wrong. In many parts of the novel, prisoners must decide
whether or not to help their prison mates. When Shukhov goes to
infirmary, his fellow prisoners save his rations, so he may eat later.
Similarly the Russian authorities and guards have made the
decision to carry out the injustices of the prison camp.
Finally, Solzhenitsyn’s novel expresses one of the most
important Christian principles, hope for the future. Christians have
faith that Christ will return some day and that there will be a
heaven. In Christianity, since Christ paid the price for the sins of
the world, there are no lost causes. Solzhenitsyn has always
believed that faith in God is necessary to live meaningfully, and
this faithlessness is responsible for many of the ills of the modern
civilization.
The Christian faith of Solzhenitsyn is reflected in the
concluding part of the novel. It is best reflected in the conversation
between Alyoshka and Shukhov. Alyoshka is the representing
character of Christianity. Alyoshka says:
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“Look here, Ivan denisovich, your soul wants to pray to god,
so why don’t you let it have its way?”
The reply of Shukhov is equally interesting. He says:
“I’ll tell you why, Alyoshka. Because all these prayers are like the
complaints we do to the higher ups ---either they don’t get there or
they come back to you marked ‘rejected’.”
The doubts of Shukhov about the existence of God are
answered beautifully by Alyoshka. He says:
“The trouble is, Ivan Denisovich, you don’t pray hard enough
and that’s why your prayers don’t work out. You must pray
unceasing! And if you have faith and tell the mountain to move, it
will move.”(Solzhenitsyn 1990:139)
The character of Shukhov is more impressive in the sense
that he is not only keeping himself physically alive but also keeping
his morality intact in an amoral atmosphere. Solzhenitsyn created
some other such characters also with a view to inspire the people
to stand up against a system where human dignity is at stake and
that should be preserved at any cost. The character of prisoner U-
81 exemplifies dignity in his behavior. Despite the years of
sufferings and prison sentence upon prison sentence, this old man
is dignified in both his actions- sitting straight, bringing his spoon
182
up to his mouth----, and his appearance heavily lined skin,
hardened hands. Though his physical appearance- bald and
without teeth – tells us of the ravages of the prison system. It is
clear that his dignity has survived intact. Thus he is not an object
of pity. He represents humanity’s difficult struggle to overcome
attempts to destroy it.
The Soviet authorities are presented as a true authoritarian
system, which does not bother about any sort of privacy or liberty.
The prisoners are not allowed to claim anything as their own. They
are forced to work even on Sundays. Shukhov says:
“Again there wasn’t going to be a Sunday this week; again
they were going to steal one of their Sundays”.
(Solzhenitsyn 1990:139)
The prisoners value their free time and see this time as
something they own. It is in this time they do their extra necessary
work like trading, working, bribing etc. on their own to survive. The
authorities have taken from them not only the opportunity to take a
nap but also the much esteemed free time which defines them as
men and as an individual which determines their physical and
spiritual survival.
183
The whole novel is a reflection of the difficult situation in a
totalitarian state that how authorities could control almost all the
activities of the common men. The regulations were made with the
motto to “rob them of their last shred of freedom.”
Solzhenitsyn also reveals certain secrets of human
psychology while discussing the functioning of the system. Though
the whole book is full of such illustrations, some of them are really
interesting. For example at one point in the novel when Shukhov
returns after his medical checkup and the doctor refuses to admit
him, though he does not feel well, he feels:
“When you are in cold, don’t expect sympathy from someone
who is warm.” (Solzhenitsyn 1990:18)
This is a very intelligent remark about the system that
generally people sitting at the higher levels do not understand the
problems of the common people.
The ending of the novel is very sarcastic. Shukhov’s
contentment that “It was almost a happy day” is surprising when
contrasted with the misery of the novel’s early moments. The
statement of Shukhov has many more connotations then only the
reminder of the theme of the Divine Comedy. Shukhov”s trajectory
in the novel, from abject misery to hard work to contentment and
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religion at the end, mimics Dante’s religious epic poem “The Divine
Comedy”, which influenced Solzhenitsyn deeply. Solzhenitsyn
writes:
“Shukhov went to sleep, and he was happy. He had a lot of
luck today. They had not put him in a cooler. The gang had not
been chased out to work in the Socialist Community Development.
He’d finagled an extra bowl of mush at noon. The boss had gotten
them good rates for their work. He found a broken hacksaw blade
which could serve him as a knife. Caesar had paid him off in the
evening. He had bought some tobacco. And he had gotten over
that sickness.” (Solzhenitsyn 1990:144)
The passage is of course deeply ironic. If this day with all its
hardships, counts as a good day in Ivan”s life, we are left to think
on what a bad day must be like.
Like his other works, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
also deals with the struggle for survival under inhuman conditions.
What must a man or a woman do to get out of such a camp alive?
Is survival the only and most important goal, are there limits to
what a person can and should do to stay alive? Is religious faith
necessary or vital for survival? The writer tries to resolve and
contemplate all these issues in this novel.
185
Apart from all these social and literal meanings, the novel
has something more to tell us. The theme of the fate of the modern
man, who must make a sense of a universe whose operations he
does not understand, is the prime concern of the novel. He
appears to raise the question that according to what principles
should one live in a seemingly absurd universe, controlled by
forces which one cannot understand and over which one has no
control?
Shukov’s fate closely resembles that of Josef K in Franz
Kafka’s The Trial. Josef K is arrested one morning without
knowing why, and he attempts to find out reasons. In his search,
he encounters a cruel court bureaucracy which operates according
to incomprehensible rules; lawyers and priest cannot provide him
with reasonable answers for his fate, and so he finally concludes
that he must be guilty. Accordingly, he willingly submits to his
execution.
Shukhov is also arrested and sent to prison camps for
absurd reasons. He does not understand the legalities of his case.
He is after all a simple worker. He meets only cruel, minor officials
of the system, who only obey orders but do not give explanations.
The intellectuals around him do not seem to have right answers.
186
Solzhenitsyn appears rejecting all the theories of communism, as
absurd.
Giorgio Agamben finds these concentration camps as the
direct result of totalitarian mentality, where law is suspended for
indefinite time. Agamben connects Greek political philosophy
through to the concentration camps of the 20th century fascism,
and even further, to detainment camps in the likes of Guantanamo
Bay or immigration detention centers, such as Bari, Italy. In these
kinds of camps, entire zones of exception are formed. The state of
exception becomes a status under which certain categories of
people live, a capture of life by right. Sovereign law makes it
possible to create entire areas in which the application of law itself
is held suspended. The concentration camps of Stalin era are no
different. Agamben finds the example of this state of exception
even in modern times also. Talking about the military order of
President George W. Bush on 13, Nov. 2001, Agamben writes:
“What is new about President Bush order is that it radically
erases any legal status of the individual, thus producing a legally
unnamable unclassifiable being. Not only do the Taliban captured
in Afghanistan not enjoy the status POW’s as defined by the
187
Geneva Convention, they do not have even the status of people
charged with a crime according to American laws”
(Agamben G. 2005: 3)
Like the authors of other prison novels, Solzhenitsyn
concludes that it is the duty of a human being not to resign and
give up the struggle for survival. However, it is wrong to
concentrate on what one must do to survive. It is better to establish
a personal code of behavior which dictates what one will not do
just to preserve one’s physical existence.
Solzhenitsyn discusses that how we can overcome these
wretched social conditions. It is clear that Solzhenitsyn sees as
little possibility for a successful overthrow of the Soviet regime.
The real hope is that the corrupt, inefficient will destroy itself from
within, and that Russia will return to a system which is founded on
the qualities, which Ivan represents: hard work without too much
reliance on technology. Even if it appears that conditions will not
change so soon, the actions of the Russian people should be
designed to survive with dignity and pride, like Shukhov and not
with groveling and crawling as Fetyukov in the novel.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn has completely shattered the myth of
communism and the triumphant socialism in his novel One Day...
188
by presenting the pathetic and pitiable conditions of an ordinary
working man in a so called heaven of the working people
Solzhenitsyn has raised many doubts about the future of the
communism. Against the propaganda of the glorious communist
future, he presents an ordinary human being, a carpenter,
Shukhov, who struggles pathetically to maintain his honesty, self
respect, and pride in a hopeless battle with mysterious forces that
seem determined –to destroy his human dignity, to deny him his
right to love country, and to render meaningless the work of his
hands. Solzhenitsyn seriously doubted the excuse that the
atrocities happened due to “the period of the personality cult”.
Solzhenitsyn just rejected all the notions like “honest communism”
or “honest communists”. Solzhenitsyn exposed the bare truth
before the world that how millions of nameless people paid with
their freedom and with life itself for the “construction of socialism”.
The researcher concludes the chapter with the observations
of scholar J. M. Chauvier on the novel. He says:
“One Day… exposed what most Communists had refused to
admit until then- the existence of concentrations camps in the land
of socialism. The documentary aspect of the story is nevertheless
very secondary. Shalanov and Ginzburg have given much more
189
detailed descriptions of the world of exiles. One Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich is an ordinary day. In contrast to the accounts
which lay stress on atrocities and tortures, the horror of the
concentration camp life is here epitomized in this stripping- bare,
this perfectly ordinary, routine, political task of dehumanization, of
disintegration of human personality for which the camp serves as
instrument.”
(Jean, Marie Chauvier.1974, vol. II, 52)
190
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