Solzhenitsyn's Stalinist Russia in Ivan Denisovich

“And now Shukov complained about nothing: neither about the length of his stretch, nor about the length of the day, nor about their swiping another Sunday. This was all he thought about now: we’ll survive. We’ll stick it out, God willing, till it’s over.” This relentless spirit is what drives the Solzhenitsyn canon against Stalinist Russia, and forces both him and his character to serve time in cold confinement, both literally and in the figurative grasp of the USSR.

Years of hard labor, poor rations and brutality represent the torment Solzhenitsyn involuntarily suffered in order to publish his controversial, reformist novels. His writing has ns, including traitorous divergent anti-authority literature and a message from a dear angel destined to save the nation from post WWII mortality. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was the causation of both incredible and devastating penalties, for both Solzhenitsyn and the USSR; it exemplified itself in both politics and culture, reverberating this scheme from the time of its release into the present day.

Ivan Denisovich is an intriguing insight in regard to the life of a war prisoner. The main character is seemingly ambivalent to his situation; he has practically discarded his past in favor of the camp. In the book, he describes how things would be better off if he stayed rather than being freed after his term’, how his life would be better off working in the freezing cold and contemplating the true meaning of life, rather than face the hopeless future outside the gates.

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This moral twist is quite fascinating on a personal scale, and may lead one to question whether life in the Gulags was truly undesirable. In the novel Shukov attempts many alliances and friendships, makes favors and trades for various goods and services, and lives a practical, motivated lifestyle while in chains. Though one may face dangers and brutality while in persecution, it may not be the end of happiness for the seldom few in between. This optimistic,oxymoronic interpretation makes for a deep insight into the nature of Solzhenitsyn, and what he might be communicating to the people of Russia.

Solzhenitsyn has firsthand experience with confusing undefined authorship. His novel The First Circle- became a pirated book in the Samizdat and was used as incriminating evidence, but Solzhenitsyn was not charged directly (he rejected his own work because he became weary of its irrelevancy.) It was also used for blackmail when the Writer’s Guild pressed the case against him, charging him for anti-Soviet corruption (which, in many ways, could have been his specific intention.) This escalating divide between Solzhenitsyn and the Writer’s Guild has a similar boding for Ivan Denisovich, who constantly feels contradiction towards the guards in the prison camp. Shukov turns himself in to the camp hospital after feeling quite ill, yet he is hindered by a ludicrous contingency: he would have to have been sick the evening before to be considered ill?. This relationship between the narrator and the authorities is reflected in Solzhenitsyn’s attempts to prove himself to readers, yet there are several drawbacks initiated by outside forces.

The back-and-forth combat within Solzhenitsyn’s publishing circles was tedious, and severely wore down Solzhenitsyn’s reputation. Shortly into Khrushchev’s presidency, he requested that both The Gulag Archipelago and Ivan Denisovich be published in order to bolster the de-Stalinization campaign4. Khrushchev used the novel to subdue his adversaries in the “white house” and introduce a new moral compass for the USSR. Yet because of this, and some of Brezhnev’s new impetus after Khrushchev left office, Solzhenitsyn’s mere presence in the nation of Russia forced political leaders to ban him and his works; so he fled to Germany with his wife. Art and dissent have collided often in Russian borders, with some demonstrations stretching the limits. Petr Pavlensky, a political artist and activist, is currently one of the nation’s most provocative protestors.

From 2012 to 2015, he performed various bodily performances, including wrapping his naked body with barb wire and nailing his scrotum to a city wall; which all took place in and around St. Petersburg?. He often rebuffs his work by annotating Ivan Denisovich, who was reaching out to a similar audience striving to find an adversary to the obsessive, controlling regime. What Pavlensky attempted to do through his work was to describe the venomous effect the nation’s leaders were inflicting on the people, and by alluding to the unwarranted imprisonment of kinsmen in camps (which Pavlensky epitomizes as livestock in a pen), he accurately, though brashly, portrayed the emotional context of being a prisoner of war. The novel is still being read widely today, used to deepen student’s understanding of Russia during the cold war and to identify the significance of the Samizdat and the incongruence of copyright law. During his time when he remained in Russia before fleeing the country, Solzhenitsyn lead the press to believe he had no connection to his works since he wasn’t involved in their unlawful publication, which today would be confused with piracy.

Quite naturally, a writer would likely discredit themselves for something they would be unnecessarily imprisoned for. In light of this, Solzhenitsyn is not truly a social activist, but instead a sympathetic author writing in a time of developing literary modernism. Ivan Denisovich is largely auto-biographical, so the work may not have been intended to attack political forces at a first glance. Yet Russian diplomacy has often been impulsive and controlling when it comes to media (hence today’s stringent regulations of abortion and homosexual propaganda in the country.) Ivan Denisovich is making an impact in media today, with new books, films and experimental media taking on its similar linear structure. Ian McIwan’s Saturday and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Galloway are excellent reads that only take place within 24 hours. More significant than the structural timeline of the novel and its future companions is the thematic similarity between Ivan D and media, which feature a sole protagonist in a singular, persistent setting.

One excellent cinematic comparison is Alejandro Innaritu’s award-winning film Birdman, about a washed-up actor trying to scrape the bottom of his career with a stage production. Its single shot technique elicits the same aesthetics and plot of Ivan D, where a struggling individual tries to cope with a toxic environment, yet still thrive under the surface. Connecting the dots between characters and real-life personalities, this depiction is fairly correspondent to noteworthy revolutionaries in World War I, particularly Leon Trotsky, who brilliantly opposed the rising Josef Stalin during his political entry’. Solzhenitsyn and Trotsky followed the de-facto route fleeing the country- but unlike Trotsky, Solzhenitsyn lived to see the light of day for his work in Russia. Was Solzhenitsyn trying to make Russia an intelligent, non-conformist state, beheaded of a dictator and turning toward into a democracy?

Much of his writing suggests mild political opposition, after much of his work was confiscated and analyzed by officials, and he was labeled as a non-conformist and a traitor to the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn’s subject matter, in all his novels, certainly embodies this nature, but he was indirectly and unjustly accused of his character’s crimes, a charge that is unthinkable in most political arenas. However there is a likelihood that Solzhenitsyn was a true tyrant by nature, but he leads us to focus not on the controversy within his novels, but the underlying message bound in his protagonists. The writing style of Ivan Denisovich is puzzling, and one may wonder if some of the meaning was “lost in translation” or perhaps just wasn’t proof-read by Solzhenitsyn before he published the novel. It’s very bumpy and can be hard to follow, especially with some of the character descriptions and the structural timeline. In some scenes, each event is played out and described, where in other segments things seem to be speeding ahead or skipped entirely.

Some may not realize who is communicating with whom or about what, and other lines of dialogue do not make any sense. These are some of the major weaknesses of the novel, yet one mustn’t pay too close attention to the errors. It might just be a simple pattern of a butchered, confusing day for the character, however it’s not the individual pieces that are important but rather the whole. After all, there are no chapter breaks in the book. An additional strength of the novel are the moral insights brought about in the discussions between the inmates. Alyosha, a priest, starts explaining the purpose of God in a time of longing, and Shukov works up an excellent rebuttal to his claims10. “Well, Alyosha,” he said with a sigh, “it’s this way. Prayers are like those appeals of ours. Either they don’t get through or they’re returned with ‘rejected’ scrawled across ’em.” “But, Ivan Denisovich, it’s because you pray too rarely, and badly at that. Without really trying. That’s why your prayers stay unanswered. One must never stop praying. If you have real faith you tell a mountain to move and it will move…” “Don’t talk nonsense, Alyosha.

I’ve never seen a mountain move. Well, to tell the truth, I’ve never seen a mountain at all. But you, now, you prayed in the Caucasus with all that Baptist society of yours—did you make a single mountain move?” Shukov’s analogy brings about a dynamic, enlightening debate about religion, and how it has made an impact in times of war. It’s truly difficult to pray- and make the mountain known as totalitarianism even budge. Solzhenitsyn was one of the only Russians to successfully stand against the USSR, consciously or not, and make an impact in the national morale. His heroes are humble and diligent, not bold and stereotypical poster boys we often see in American historic fiction. With his work we can feel a sense of dignity even in the worst of times, and his novel seemingly becomes a landmark among the memoirs of the Gulags and the destruction of the Soviet empire. What is portrayed as a simple day in the life of a war criminal symbolizes a lifetime of sacrifice under a domineering dictatorship, while a simple man with a simple message becomes a human torch for the persecuted masses.