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![One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel (FSG Classics) by [Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, H. T. Willetts]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51h1KjonbWL._SY346_.jpg)
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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel (FSG Classics) Reprint Edition, Kindle Edition
by
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
(Author),
H. T. Willetts
(Translator)
Format: Kindle Edition
| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Author) See search results for this author |
| H. T. Willetts (Translator) See search results for this author |
For the centenary of the Russian Revolution, a new edition of the Russian Nobel Prize-winning author's most accessible novel
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an undisputed classic of contemporary literature. First published (in censored form) in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, it is the story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov as he struggles to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. On every page of this graphic depiction of Ivan Denisovich's struggles, the pain of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's own decade-long experience in the gulag is apparent—which makes its ultimate tribute to one man's will to triumph over relentless dehumanization all the more moving.
An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced-work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary works to have emerged from the Soviet Union. The first of Solzhenitsyn's novels to be published, it forced both the Soviet Union and the West to confront the Soviet's human rights record, and the novel was specifically mentioned in the presentation speech when Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. Above all, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich establishes Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy" (Harrison Salisbury, The New York Times).
This unexpurgated, widely acclaimed translation by H. T. Willetts is the only translation authorized by Solzhenitsyn himself.
- ISBN-13978-0374534684
- EditionReprint
- PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
- Publication date16 Mar. 2005
- LanguageEnglish
- File size647 KB
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Product description
Review
Cannot fail to arouse bitterness and pain in the heart of the reader. A literary and political event of the first magnitude.
New Statesman
Stark . . . the story of how one falsely accused convict and his fellow prisoners survived or perished in an arctic slave labor camp after the war.
Time
Both as a political tract and as a literary work, it is in the Doctor Zhivago category.
Washington Post
Dramatic . . . outspoken . . . graphically detailed . . . a moving human record.
Library Journal"
-Cannot fail to arouse bitterness and pain in the heart of the reader. A literary and political event of the first magnitude.-
-New Statesman
-Stark . . . the story of how one falsely accused convict and his fellow prisoners survived or perished in an arctic slave labor camp after the war.-
-Time
-Both as a political tract and as a literary work, it is in the Doctor Zhivago category.-
-Washington Post
-Dramatic . . . outspoken . . . graphically detailed . . . a moving human record.-
-Library Journal
"Cannot fail to arouse bitterness and pain in the heart of the reader. A literary and political event of the first magnitude."
-New Statesman "Stark . . . the story of how one falsely accused convict and his fellow prisoners survived or perished in an arctic slave labor camp after the war."
-Time "Both as a political tract and as a literary work, it is in the Doctor Zhivago category."
-Washington Post "Dramatic . . . outspoken . . . graphically detailed . . . a moving human record."
-Library Journal --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
New Statesman
Stark . . . the story of how one falsely accused convict and his fellow prisoners survived or perished in an arctic slave labor camp after the war.
Time
Both as a political tract and as a literary work, it is in the Doctor Zhivago category.
Washington Post
Dramatic . . . outspoken . . . graphically detailed . . . a moving human record.
Library Journal"
-Cannot fail to arouse bitterness and pain in the heart of the reader. A literary and political event of the first magnitude.-
-New Statesman
-Stark . . . the story of how one falsely accused convict and his fellow prisoners survived or perished in an arctic slave labor camp after the war.-
-Time
-Both as a political tract and as a literary work, it is in the Doctor Zhivago category.-
-Washington Post
-Dramatic . . . outspoken . . . graphically detailed . . . a moving human record.-
-Library Journal
"Cannot fail to arouse bitterness and pain in the heart of the reader. A literary and political event of the first magnitude."
-New Statesman "Stark . . . the story of how one falsely accused convict and his fellow prisoners survived or perished in an arctic slave labor camp after the war."
-Time "Both as a political tract and as a literary work, it is in the Doctor Zhivago category."
-Washington Post "Dramatic . . . outspoken . . . graphically detailed . . . a moving human record."
-Library Journal --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
Alexander Solzhenitsyn grew up in Rostov-na-Donu, where he studied mathematics at Rostov State Univ. He served in the Red Army, rising to the rank of artillery captain, and was decorated for bravery. In 1945 he was arrested for criticizing Stalin in letters to a friend and sentenced to eight years in labor camps. After completing his prison sentence, he was exiled to the Kazakh SSR (now Kazakhstan). Stalin died in 1953 and Solzhenitsyn's citizenship was restored in 1956. His first novels describe the grimness of life in the vast labor-camp system. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was permitted publication in 1962 through the personal intervention of Nikita Khrushchev, in an effort to encourage anti-Stalinist feeling. The book was hailed as an expose of Stalinist methods, and it placed the author in the foremost ranks of Soviet writers. With Khrushchev's deposition, Solzhenitsyn's succeeding works were banned, and he was continually censured by the Soviet press. With subsequent novels- The First Circle (1968), detailing the lives of scientists forced to work in a Stalinist research center, and Cancer Ward (1968), concerning the complex social microcosm within a government hospital-censorship tightened, and Solzhenitsyn was increasingly regarded as a dangerous and hostile critic of Soviet society. His books found publication and an enormous audience abroad, and in the USSR they were circulated in samizdat (self-publishing, underground) editions. In 1969 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers and prohibited from living in Moscow. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but government pressure, specifically the threat of not being allowed to return from Stockholm, compelled him to decline the prize. In 1973, fearing that he might soon be imprisoned again, Solzhenitsyn authorized foreign publication of The Gulag Archipelago, a vast work that he had completed in 1968 documenting, with personal interviews and reminiscences, the operation of the oppressive Soviet system from 1918 to 1956. In Feb., 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, formally accused of treason, stripped of his citizenship, and forcibly deported to the West. In exile he personally accepted his Nobel Prize in Stockholm (1974). Solzhenitsyn ultimately settled in the United States, living in rural Vermont, and in 1980 The Oak and the Calf and The Mortal Danger were published. In 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev restored the writer's citizenship and the following year treason charges were dropped, laying the groundwork for Solzhenitsyn's 1994 return to his homeland. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
REVEILLE WAS sounded, as always, at 5 a.m.--a hammer pounding on a rail outside camp HQ. The ringing noise came faintly on and off through the windowpanes covered with ice more than an inch thick, and died away fast. It was cold and the warder didn't feel like going on banging.
The sound stopped and it was pitch black on the other side of the window, just like in the middle of the night when Shukhov had to get up to go to the latrine, only now three yellow beams fell on the window--from two lights on the perimeter and one inside the camp.
He didn't know why but nobody'd come to open up the barracks. And you couldn't hear the orderlies hoisting the latrine tank on the poles to carry it out.
Shukhov never slept through reveille but always got up at once. That gave him about an hour and a half to himself before the morning roll call, a time when anyone who knew what was what in the camps could always scrounge a little something on the side. He could sew someone a cover for his mittens out of a piece of old lining. He could bring one of the big gang bosses his dry felt boots while he was still in his bunk, to save him the trouble of hanging around the pile of boots in his bare feet and trying to find his own. Or he could run around to one of the supply rooms where there might be a little job, sweeping or carrying something. Or he could go to the mess hall to pick up bowls from the tables and take piles of them to the dishwashers. That was another way of getting food, but there were always too many other people with the same idea. And the worst thing was that if there was something left in a bowl you started to lick it. You couldn't help it. And Shukhov could still hear the words of his first gang boss, Kuzyomin--an old camp hand who'd already been inside for twelve years in 1943. Once, by a fire in a forest clearing, he'd said to a new batch of men just brought in from the front:
"It's the law of the jungle here, fellows. But even here you can live. The first to go is the guy who licks out bowls, puts his faith in the infirmary, or squeals to the screws."
He was dead right about this--though it didn't always work out that way with the fellows who squealed to the screws. They knew how to look after themselves. They got away with it and it was the other guys who suffered.
Shukhov always got up at reveille, but today he didn't. He'd been feeling lousy since the night before--with aches and pains and the shivers, and he just couldn't manage to keep warm that night. In his sleep he'd felt very sick and then again a little better. All the time he dreaded the morning.
But the morning came, as it always did.
Anyway, how could anyone get warm here, what with the ice piled up on the window and a white cobweb of frost running along the whole barracks where the walls joined the ceiling? And a hell of a barracks it was.
Shukhov stayed in bed. He was lying on the top bunk, with his blanket and overcoat over his head and both his feet tucked in the sleeve of his jacket. He couldn't see anything, but he could tell by the sounds what was going on in the barracks and in his own part of it. He could hear the orderlies tramping down the corridor with one of the twenty-gallon latrine tanks. This was supposed to be light work for people on the sick list--but it was no joke carrying the thing out without spilling it!
Then someone from Gang 75 dumped a pile of felt boots from the drying room on the floor. And now someone from his gang did the same (it was also their turn to use the drying room today). The gang boss and his assistant quickly put on their boots, and their bunk creaked. The assistant gang boss would now go and get the bread rations. And then the boss would take off for the Production Planning Section (PPS) at HQ.
But, Shukhov remembered, this wasn't just the same old daily visit to the PPS clerks. Today was the big day for them. They'd heard a lot of talk of switching their gang--104--from putting up workshops to a new job, building a new "Socialist Community Development." But so far it was nothing more than bare fields covered with snowdrifts, and before anything could be done there, holes had to be dug, posts put in, and barbed wire put up--by the prisoners for the prisoners, so they couldn't get out. And then they could start building.
You could bet your life that for a month there'd be no place where you could get warm--not even a hole in the ground. And you couldn't make a fire--what could you use for fuel? So your only hope was to work like hell.
The gang boss was worried and was going to try to fix things, try to palm the job off on some other gang, one that was a little slower on the uptake. Of course you couldn't go empty-handed. It would take a pound of fatback for the chief clerk. Or even two.
Maybe Shukhov would try to get himself on the sick list so he could have a day off. There was no harm in trying. His whole body was one big ache.
Then he wondered--which warder was on duty today?
He remembered that it was Big Ivan, a tall, scrawny sergeant with black eyes. The first time you saw him he scared the pants off you, but when you got to know him he was the easiest of all the duty warders--wouldn't put you in the can or drag you off to the disciplinary officer. So Shukhov could stay put till it was time for Barracks 9 to go to the mess hall.
The bunk rocked and shook as two men got up together--on the top Shukhov's neighbor, the Baptist Alyoshka, and down below Buynovsky, who'd been a captain in the navy.
When they'd carried out the two latrine tanks, the orderlies started quarreling about who'd go to get the hot water. They went on and on like two old women. The electric welder from Gang 20 barked at them:
"Hey, you old bastards!" And he threw a boot at them. "I'll make you shut up."
The boot thudded against a post. The orderlies shut up.
The assistant boss of the gang next to them grumbled in a low voice:
"Vasili Fyodorovich! The bastards pulled a fast one on me in the supply room. We always get four two-pound loaves, but today we only got three. Someone'll have to get the short end."
He spoke quietly, but of course the whole gang heard him and they all held their breath. Who was going to be shortchanged on rations this evening?
Shukhov stayed where he was, on the hard-packed sawdust of his mattress. If only it was one thing or another--either a high fever or an end to the pain. But this way he didn't know where he was.
While the Baptist was whispering his prayers, the Captain came back from the latrine and said to no one in particular, but sort of gloating:
"Brace yourselves, men! It's at least twenty below."
Shukhov made up his mind to go to the infirmary.
And then some strong hand stripped his jacket and blanket off him. Shukhov jerked his quilted overcoat off his face and raised himself up a bit. Below him, his head level with the top of the bunk, stood the Thin Tartar.
So this bastard had come on duty and sneaked up on them.
"S-854!" the Tartar read from the white patch on the back of the black coat. "Three days in the can with work as usual."
The minute they heard his funny muffled voice everyone in the entire barracks--which was pretty dark (not all the lights were on) and where two hundred men slept in fifty bug-ridden bunks--came to life all of a sudden. Those who hadn't yet gotten up began to dress in a hurry.
"But what for, Comrade Warder?" Shukhov asked, and he made his voice sound more pitiful than he really felt.
The can was only half as bad if you were given normal work. You got hot food and there was no time to brood. Not being let out to work--that was real punishment.
"Why weren't you up yet? Let's go to the Commandant's office," the Tartar drawled--he and
Shukhov and everyone else knew what he was getting the can for.
There was a blank look on the Tartar's hairless, crumpled face. He turned around and looked for somebody else to pick on, but everyone--whether in the dark or under a light, whether on a bottom bunk or a top one--was shoving his legs into the black, padded trousers with numbers on the left knee. Or they were already dressed and were wrapping themselves up and hurrying for the door to wait outside till the Tartar left.
If Shukhov had been sent to the can for something he deserved he wouldn't have been so upset. What made him mad was that he was always one of the first to get up. But there wasn't a chance of getting out of it with the Tartar. So he went on asking to be let off just for the hell of it, but meantime pulled on his padded trousers (they too had a worn, dirty piece of cloth sewed above the left knee, with the number S-854 painted on it in black and already faded), put on his jacket (this had two numbers, one on the chest and one on the back), took his boots from the pile on the floor, put on his cap (with the same number in front), and went out after the Tartar.
The whole Gang 104 saw Shukhov being taken off, but no one said a word. It wouldn't help, and what could you say? The gang boss might have stood up for him, but he'd left already. And Shukhov himself said nothing to anyone. He didn't want to aggravate the Tartar. They'd keep his breakfast for him and didn't have to be told.
The two of them went out.
It was freezing cold, with a fog that caught your breath. Two large searchlights were crisscrossing over the compound from the watchtowers at the far corners. The lights on the perimeter and the lights inside the camp were on full force. There were so many of them that they blotted out the stars.
With their felt boots crunching on the snow, prisoners were rushing past on their business--to the latrines, to the supply rooms, to the package room, or to the kitchen to get their groats cooked. Their shoulders were hunched and their coats buttoned up, and they all felt cold, not so much because of the freezing weather as because they knew they'd have to be out in it all day. But the Tartar in his old overcoat with shabby blue tabs walked steadily on and the cold didn't seem to bother him at all.
They went past the high wooden fence around the punishment block (the stone prison inside the camp), past the barbed-wire fence that guarded the bakery from the prisoners, past the corner of the HQ where a length of frost-covered rail was fastened to a post with heavy wire, and past another post where--in a sheltered spot to keep the readings from being too low--the thermometer hung, caked over with ice. Shukhov gave a hopeful sidelong glance at the milk-white tube. If it went down to forty-two below zero they weren't supposed to be marched out to work. But today the thermometer wasn't pushing forty or anything like it.
They went into HQ--straight into the warders' room. There it turned out--as Shukhov had already had a hunch on the way--that they never meant to put him in the can but simply that the floor in the warders' room needed scrubbing. Sure enough, the Tartar now told Shukhov that he was letting him off and ordered him to mop the floor.
Mopping the floor in the warders' room was the job of a special prisoner--the HQ orderly, who never worked outside the camp. But a long time ago he'd set himself up in HQ and now had a free run of the rooms where the Major, the disciplinary officer, and the security chief worked. He waited on them all the time and sometimes got to hear things even the warders didn't know. And for some time he'd figured that to scrub floors for ordinary warders was a little beneath him. They called for him once or twice, then got wise and began pulling in ordinary prisoners to do the job.
The stove in the warders' room was blazing away. A couple of warders who'd undressed down to their dirty shirts were playing checkers, and a third who'd left on his belted sheepskin coat and felt boots was sleeping on a narrow bench. There was a bucket and rag in the corner.
Shukhov was real pleased and thanked the Tartar for letting him off:
"Thank you, Comrade Warder. I'll never get up late again."
The rule here was simple--finish your job and get out. Now that Shukhov had been given some work, his pains seemed to have stopped. He took the bucket and went to the well without his mittens, which he'd forgotten and left under his pillow in the rush.
The gang bosses reporting at the PPS had formed a small group near the post, and one of the younger ones, who was once a Hero of the Soviet Union, climbed up and wiped the thermometer.
The others were shouting up to him: "Don't breathe on it or it'll go up."
"Go up . . . the hell it will . . . it won't make a fucking bit of difference anyway."
Tyurin--the boss of Shukhov's work gang--was not there. Shukhov put down the bucket and dug his hands into his sleeves. He wanted to see what was going on.
The fellow up the post said in a hoarse voice: "Seventeen and a half below--shit!"
And after another look just to make sure, he jumped down.
"Anyway, it's always wrong--it's a damned liar," someone said. "They'd never put in one that works here."
The gang bosses scattered. Shukhov ran to the well. Under the flaps of his cap, which he'd lowered but hadn't tied, his ears ached with the cold.
The top of the well was covered by a thick of ice so that the bucket would hardly go through the hole. And the rope was stiff as a board.
Shukhov's hands were frozen, so when he got back to the warders' room with the steaming bucket he shoved them in the water. He felt warmer. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
The sound stopped and it was pitch black on the other side of the window, just like in the middle of the night when Shukhov had to get up to go to the latrine, only now three yellow beams fell on the window--from two lights on the perimeter and one inside the camp.
He didn't know why but nobody'd come to open up the barracks. And you couldn't hear the orderlies hoisting the latrine tank on the poles to carry it out.
Shukhov never slept through reveille but always got up at once. That gave him about an hour and a half to himself before the morning roll call, a time when anyone who knew what was what in the camps could always scrounge a little something on the side. He could sew someone a cover for his mittens out of a piece of old lining. He could bring one of the big gang bosses his dry felt boots while he was still in his bunk, to save him the trouble of hanging around the pile of boots in his bare feet and trying to find his own. Or he could run around to one of the supply rooms where there might be a little job, sweeping or carrying something. Or he could go to the mess hall to pick up bowls from the tables and take piles of them to the dishwashers. That was another way of getting food, but there were always too many other people with the same idea. And the worst thing was that if there was something left in a bowl you started to lick it. You couldn't help it. And Shukhov could still hear the words of his first gang boss, Kuzyomin--an old camp hand who'd already been inside for twelve years in 1943. Once, by a fire in a forest clearing, he'd said to a new batch of men just brought in from the front:
"It's the law of the jungle here, fellows. But even here you can live. The first to go is the guy who licks out bowls, puts his faith in the infirmary, or squeals to the screws."
He was dead right about this--though it didn't always work out that way with the fellows who squealed to the screws. They knew how to look after themselves. They got away with it and it was the other guys who suffered.
Shukhov always got up at reveille, but today he didn't. He'd been feeling lousy since the night before--with aches and pains and the shivers, and he just couldn't manage to keep warm that night. In his sleep he'd felt very sick and then again a little better. All the time he dreaded the morning.
But the morning came, as it always did.
Anyway, how could anyone get warm here, what with the ice piled up on the window and a white cobweb of frost running along the whole barracks where the walls joined the ceiling? And a hell of a barracks it was.
Shukhov stayed in bed. He was lying on the top bunk, with his blanket and overcoat over his head and both his feet tucked in the sleeve of his jacket. He couldn't see anything, but he could tell by the sounds what was going on in the barracks and in his own part of it. He could hear the orderlies tramping down the corridor with one of the twenty-gallon latrine tanks. This was supposed to be light work for people on the sick list--but it was no joke carrying the thing out without spilling it!
Then someone from Gang 75 dumped a pile of felt boots from the drying room on the floor. And now someone from his gang did the same (it was also their turn to use the drying room today). The gang boss and his assistant quickly put on their boots, and their bunk creaked. The assistant gang boss would now go and get the bread rations. And then the boss would take off for the Production Planning Section (PPS) at HQ.
But, Shukhov remembered, this wasn't just the same old daily visit to the PPS clerks. Today was the big day for them. They'd heard a lot of talk of switching their gang--104--from putting up workshops to a new job, building a new "Socialist Community Development." But so far it was nothing more than bare fields covered with snowdrifts, and before anything could be done there, holes had to be dug, posts put in, and barbed wire put up--by the prisoners for the prisoners, so they couldn't get out. And then they could start building.
You could bet your life that for a month there'd be no place where you could get warm--not even a hole in the ground. And you couldn't make a fire--what could you use for fuel? So your only hope was to work like hell.
The gang boss was worried and was going to try to fix things, try to palm the job off on some other gang, one that was a little slower on the uptake. Of course you couldn't go empty-handed. It would take a pound of fatback for the chief clerk. Or even two.
Maybe Shukhov would try to get himself on the sick list so he could have a day off. There was no harm in trying. His whole body was one big ache.
Then he wondered--which warder was on duty today?
He remembered that it was Big Ivan, a tall, scrawny sergeant with black eyes. The first time you saw him he scared the pants off you, but when you got to know him he was the easiest of all the duty warders--wouldn't put you in the can or drag you off to the disciplinary officer. So Shukhov could stay put till it was time for Barracks 9 to go to the mess hall.
The bunk rocked and shook as two men got up together--on the top Shukhov's neighbor, the Baptist Alyoshka, and down below Buynovsky, who'd been a captain in the navy.
When they'd carried out the two latrine tanks, the orderlies started quarreling about who'd go to get the hot water. They went on and on like two old women. The electric welder from Gang 20 barked at them:
"Hey, you old bastards!" And he threw a boot at them. "I'll make you shut up."
The boot thudded against a post. The orderlies shut up.
The assistant boss of the gang next to them grumbled in a low voice:
"Vasili Fyodorovich! The bastards pulled a fast one on me in the supply room. We always get four two-pound loaves, but today we only got three. Someone'll have to get the short end."
He spoke quietly, but of course the whole gang heard him and they all held their breath. Who was going to be shortchanged on rations this evening?
Shukhov stayed where he was, on the hard-packed sawdust of his mattress. If only it was one thing or another--either a high fever or an end to the pain. But this way he didn't know where he was.
While the Baptist was whispering his prayers, the Captain came back from the latrine and said to no one in particular, but sort of gloating:
"Brace yourselves, men! It's at least twenty below."
Shukhov made up his mind to go to the infirmary.
And then some strong hand stripped his jacket and blanket off him. Shukhov jerked his quilted overcoat off his face and raised himself up a bit. Below him, his head level with the top of the bunk, stood the Thin Tartar.
So this bastard had come on duty and sneaked up on them.
"S-854!" the Tartar read from the white patch on the back of the black coat. "Three days in the can with work as usual."
The minute they heard his funny muffled voice everyone in the entire barracks--which was pretty dark (not all the lights were on) and where two hundred men slept in fifty bug-ridden bunks--came to life all of a sudden. Those who hadn't yet gotten up began to dress in a hurry.
"But what for, Comrade Warder?" Shukhov asked, and he made his voice sound more pitiful than he really felt.
The can was only half as bad if you were given normal work. You got hot food and there was no time to brood. Not being let out to work--that was real punishment.
"Why weren't you up yet? Let's go to the Commandant's office," the Tartar drawled--he and
Shukhov and everyone else knew what he was getting the can for.
There was a blank look on the Tartar's hairless, crumpled face. He turned around and looked for somebody else to pick on, but everyone--whether in the dark or under a light, whether on a bottom bunk or a top one--was shoving his legs into the black, padded trousers with numbers on the left knee. Or they were already dressed and were wrapping themselves up and hurrying for the door to wait outside till the Tartar left.
If Shukhov had been sent to the can for something he deserved he wouldn't have been so upset. What made him mad was that he was always one of the first to get up. But there wasn't a chance of getting out of it with the Tartar. So he went on asking to be let off just for the hell of it, but meantime pulled on his padded trousers (they too had a worn, dirty piece of cloth sewed above the left knee, with the number S-854 painted on it in black and already faded), put on his jacket (this had two numbers, one on the chest and one on the back), took his boots from the pile on the floor, put on his cap (with the same number in front), and went out after the Tartar.
The whole Gang 104 saw Shukhov being taken off, but no one said a word. It wouldn't help, and what could you say? The gang boss might have stood up for him, but he'd left already. And Shukhov himself said nothing to anyone. He didn't want to aggravate the Tartar. They'd keep his breakfast for him and didn't have to be told.
The two of them went out.
It was freezing cold, with a fog that caught your breath. Two large searchlights were crisscrossing over the compound from the watchtowers at the far corners. The lights on the perimeter and the lights inside the camp were on full force. There were so many of them that they blotted out the stars.
With their felt boots crunching on the snow, prisoners were rushing past on their business--to the latrines, to the supply rooms, to the package room, or to the kitchen to get their groats cooked. Their shoulders were hunched and their coats buttoned up, and they all felt cold, not so much because of the freezing weather as because they knew they'd have to be out in it all day. But the Tartar in his old overcoat with shabby blue tabs walked steadily on and the cold didn't seem to bother him at all.
They went past the high wooden fence around the punishment block (the stone prison inside the camp), past the barbed-wire fence that guarded the bakery from the prisoners, past the corner of the HQ where a length of frost-covered rail was fastened to a post with heavy wire, and past another post where--in a sheltered spot to keep the readings from being too low--the thermometer hung, caked over with ice. Shukhov gave a hopeful sidelong glance at the milk-white tube. If it went down to forty-two below zero they weren't supposed to be marched out to work. But today the thermometer wasn't pushing forty or anything like it.
They went into HQ--straight into the warders' room. There it turned out--as Shukhov had already had a hunch on the way--that they never meant to put him in the can but simply that the floor in the warders' room needed scrubbing. Sure enough, the Tartar now told Shukhov that he was letting him off and ordered him to mop the floor.
Mopping the floor in the warders' room was the job of a special prisoner--the HQ orderly, who never worked outside the camp. But a long time ago he'd set himself up in HQ and now had a free run of the rooms where the Major, the disciplinary officer, and the security chief worked. He waited on them all the time and sometimes got to hear things even the warders didn't know. And for some time he'd figured that to scrub floors for ordinary warders was a little beneath him. They called for him once or twice, then got wise and began pulling in ordinary prisoners to do the job.
The stove in the warders' room was blazing away. A couple of warders who'd undressed down to their dirty shirts were playing checkers, and a third who'd left on his belted sheepskin coat and felt boots was sleeping on a narrow bench. There was a bucket and rag in the corner.
Shukhov was real pleased and thanked the Tartar for letting him off:
"Thank you, Comrade Warder. I'll never get up late again."
The rule here was simple--finish your job and get out. Now that Shukhov had been given some work, his pains seemed to have stopped. He took the bucket and went to the well without his mittens, which he'd forgotten and left under his pillow in the rush.
The gang bosses reporting at the PPS had formed a small group near the post, and one of the younger ones, who was once a Hero of the Soviet Union, climbed up and wiped the thermometer.
The others were shouting up to him: "Don't breathe on it or it'll go up."
"Go up . . . the hell it will . . . it won't make a fucking bit of difference anyway."
Tyurin--the boss of Shukhov's work gang--was not there. Shukhov put down the bucket and dug his hands into his sleeves. He wanted to see what was going on.
The fellow up the post said in a hoarse voice: "Seventeen and a half below--shit!"
And after another look just to make sure, he jumped down.
"Anyway, it's always wrong--it's a damned liar," someone said. "They'd never put in one that works here."
The gang bosses scattered. Shukhov ran to the well. Under the flaps of his cap, which he'd lowered but hadn't tied, his ears ached with the cold.
The top of the well was covered by a thick of ice so that the bucket would hardly go through the hole. And the rope was stiff as a board.
Shukhov's hands were frozen, so when he got back to the warders' room with the steaming bucket he shoved them in the water. He felt warmer. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From the Back Cover
WITH A FOREWORD BY ALEXIS KLIMOFF
'A masterpiece in the great Russian tradition' New Statesman
The Gulag, the Stalinist labour camps to which millions of Russians were condemned for political deviation, has become a household word in the West. This is due to the accounts of many witnesses, but most of all to the publication, in 1962, of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the novel that first brought Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to public attention. His story of one typical day in a labour camp as experienced by prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is sufficient to describe the entire world of the Soviet camps.
'This is the first worthy translation into English and the one I have approved' Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
See also: The Complete Prose Tales of Alexandr Sergeyevitch Pushkin --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
'A masterpiece in the great Russian tradition' New Statesman
The Gulag, the Stalinist labour camps to which millions of Russians were condemned for political deviation, has become a household word in the West. This is due to the accounts of many witnesses, but most of all to the publication, in 1962, of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the novel that first brought Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to public attention. His story of one typical day in a labour camp as experienced by prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is sufficient to describe the entire world of the Soviet camps.
'This is the first worthy translation into English and the one I have approved' Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
See also: The Complete Prose Tales of Alexandr Sergeyevitch Pushkin --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Book Description
The Russian masterpiece by Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Synopsis
Presents a new translation of the fictional account of the daily hardships a prisoner endures in a Stalinist labor camp. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From the Inside Flap
From the icy blast of reveille through the sweet release of sleep, Ivan Denisovich endures. A common carpenter, he is one of millions viciously imprisoned for countless years on baseless charges, sentenced to the waking nightmares of the Soviet work camps in Siberia. Even in the face of degrading hatred, where life is reduced to a bowl of gruel and a rare cigarette, hope and dignity prevail. This powerful novel of fact is a scathing indictment of Communist tyranny, and an eloquent affirmation of the human spirit. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B00BMKMK3M
- Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Reprint edition (16 Mar. 2005)
- Language : English
- File size : 647 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 209 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 20,044 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 167 in Classic Literary Fiction
- 357 in Historical Literary Fiction
- 908 in Contemporary Literary Fiction
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About the author
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Aleksandr Isayevich[a] Solzhenitsyn (/ˌsoʊlʒəˈniːtsɪn, ˌsɔːl-/; Russian: Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын, pronounced [ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɪˈsaɪvʲɪtɕ səlʐɨˈnʲitsɨn]; 11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) (often Romanized to Alexandr or Alexander) was a Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. He was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and its totalitarianism and helped to raise global awareness of its Gulag forced labor camp system. He was allowed to publish only one work in the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), in the periodical Novy Mir. After this he had to publish in the West, most notably Cancer Ward (1968), August 1914 (1971), and The Gulag Archipelago (1973). Solzhenitsyn was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature". Solzhenitsyn was afraid to go to Stockholm to receive his award for fear that he wouldn't be allowed to reenter. He was eventually expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1994 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Verhoeff, Bert / Anefo [CC BY-SA 3.0 nl (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 November 2018
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This is a small book. You can actually read it in a day or two. But it's absolutely fantastic. Utterly gripping, I couldn't put it down. And have read it twice now. Ivan is in such a dreadful place (a gulag camp) yet somehow the book takes you on a fabulous journey with him and its not depressing at all. In fact somehow its uplifting to the point where it made me question my own reality and the way I perceive my life.
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I had big expectations of this book. The history behind it is legendary and the authenticity cannot be questioned.
It is a fascinating account of just one day in the camps and I'm sure it was shocking when it was published.
The problem is that it has not aged well as this subject has since been reported in much deeper ways, both fictionally and factually.
I found myself getting bored with it (to my shame) and was pleased that is was such a small book.
It is a fascinating account of just one day in the camps and I'm sure it was shocking when it was published.
The problem is that it has not aged well as this subject has since been reported in much deeper ways, both fictionally and factually.
I found myself getting bored with it (to my shame) and was pleased that is was such a small book.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 May 2020
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It took me the 39 years between the first time I read it till the second time I read it to realise that it was called one day in the life and only had one chapter because it was actually the story of one day. I found it shocking and moving when I was 14 but I think the intervening 39 years added a bit more depth 😱🤣😉 Thankfully .
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 September 2019
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Very short read, good intro to Solzhenitsyn's literature (especially to Gulag Archipelago). It is in fictional format.
Wouldn't say it is close to Faludy's "My Happy Days in Hell", or the Gulag Archipelago, as I have read them before One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, but if you start with this book, the experience can be even better.
Wouldn't say it is close to Faludy's "My Happy Days in Hell", or the Gulag Archipelago, as I have read them before One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, but if you start with this book, the experience can be even better.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 June 2021
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I found some parts a bit hard to follow and tedious to read, such as describing the work and the meals. There were also too many characters to keep track of but I really liked the overall message. It portrays the very best and worst sides of humanity. How unbelievably vindictive and petty the warders were and how resilient and stoic the main character was. It's a useful reminder of how lucky we are to live in these times and how much we take for granted.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 December 2012
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn experienced life in the gulag for 8 years. This semi-autobiographical novel distils that experience into one bitter winters day of his protagonist, Ivan Denisovich Shukov. There are no chapters, and nothing particularly happens. Nonetheless I found this to be a profoundly moving book.
Survival was about remaining inconspicuous, taking joy from whether you got a potato in your soup or not and making it to the end of the day. There is no polemicising about the injustice of it all. Just a matter of fact description of how prisoners managed to make life just a little more bearable where they could, under the discretion of guards both as much a prisoner as the inmates and still able to send someone to probable death in freezing solitary confinement.
It is the systematic, bureacratic, industrialised nature of this imprisonment that is the most chilling realisation when reading. There's no hatred for these prisoners. No ideological zeal in the camp guards. The guards are there because the prisoners must be guarded and the prisoners are there because... well, it doesn't matter.
This is what really happened to tens of millions of people and this book shows how the Russian people made it through Stalin's reign. Not by bombast and fearless defiance, but by quietly getting on with it in the hope tomorrow would be different.
Survival was about remaining inconspicuous, taking joy from whether you got a potato in your soup or not and making it to the end of the day. There is no polemicising about the injustice of it all. Just a matter of fact description of how prisoners managed to make life just a little more bearable where they could, under the discretion of guards both as much a prisoner as the inmates and still able to send someone to probable death in freezing solitary confinement.
It is the systematic, bureacratic, industrialised nature of this imprisonment that is the most chilling realisation when reading. There's no hatred for these prisoners. No ideological zeal in the camp guards. The guards are there because the prisoners must be guarded and the prisoners are there because... well, it doesn't matter.
This is what really happened to tens of millions of people and this book shows how the Russian people made it through Stalin's reign. Not by bombast and fearless defiance, but by quietly getting on with it in the hope tomorrow would be different.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 October 2019
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If you read this book you won’t complain about your lot again. The treatment of prisoners in these conditions goes beyond punishment. A well written narrative where the reader becomes a temporary prisoner, experiencing the harsh realities of a Siberian hell hole, for just one day. Not too sure I could’ve done a week, let alone 25yrs.
Recommended.
Recommended.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 July 2020
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I tried. I really tried to like this classic. I preserved but as it when on it became insanely boring. I don’t know if this is down to the author’s style or the translation as I’m not an academic, but I gave up on it, despite being really interested in the subject matter.