One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Rating:
Summary: be more accurate
Review: hrrr grumble grumble grumble. He's refered to as Shukov because THAT'S HIS LAST NAME. Ivan Denisovich Shukov. Anyone who takes a second to look at Russian names would realise that Denisovich is a patronymic, meaning that his father's name was Denis, and a lot of Russian last names end in -ov (-ova for the women). And Lorina, he didn't escape alone, but most of the others were shot trying to get back, he's not stopped on the way to the mess hall but for not getting up on time, and he doesn't have 3653 days LEFT. That's the total sentence. 365 times ten plus 3 for leap years. He's gone through a bit more than 8 years. God, next time think before you write.

But seriously, other people, read it. I found this one of the best books I've ever read (not really but it seemed so at the time). It's a pessimistic book, about the barbarity of man, and the price of freedom, and so on, though I'm sure Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote it to reveal the truth to post-Stalinist Russia. It made me really question what matters in life etc etc all that other stuff.

Worth the read

Rating:
Summary: Compelling - Very vivid
Review: I tried to read this in my twenties and just couldn't appreciate the harshness of the prison camps at that age. Reading it again in my thirties, I find it a compelling story. Short and well told, it covers one day from reveille (5 AM) to lights out (around 10 PM) in a Russian prison camp. Prisoners were never allowed to see a clock and he said the night check at 9 PM always resulted in a recount so you never went to bed before 10. Ivan Denisovich, called Shukov throughout the book (or S-854 by his warders), takes us through his pre-roll call activities (trying to get on the sick list and a near miss with being thrown in "the can"), through roll call and the process of going out to the work site, how they were assigned and how the actual work day went, the process of checking back into the work camp and evening activities like the evening meal and receipt of packages, all the way up to lights out.

Of course it is not the actual activities that make the story so compelling. The actual activities are actually quite mundane and boring. It is the extent of the deprivation, the harshness of the conditions and the many various personalities that are so well described that you can see them, their mannerisms and expressions, in your mind's eye. Many of the men were considered spies after escaping from German POW camps - some only made a comment somewhere out of line. Each man comes through clear. Take Captain, a loyal old naval officer who's only crime was to receive a souvenir from a British admiral engraved "in Gratitude". He is a staunch Communist and party man and a little too outspoken to make it in the camp though his fellow members of gang 104 try to help him out. Then there is Alyoska, the Baptist. His is true faith - "... you mustn't pray for somebody to send you a package or for 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 the Lord will take evil things from our hearts."
And there is Tyurin, the tough but well respected gang boss ... and Der, a camp 'bureacrat' who tries to goes against him.

Good men (most of them), good book ... worth a few hours to read.

Rating:
Summary: story as exciting as its setting
Review: This is Solzhenitsyn's literary representation of Stalin's Siberian camps. The mood of the story is very defeatist; the main character, Ivan, has accepted his position and does not rebel against it. Although there were definitely groups of 'zeks' (prisoners) that were rebellious to the end, such prisoners are not mentioned here.

The story follows Ivan from the opening call until he shuts his eyes at night. The events depicted are not very exciting, showcasing how trying prison life was. Probably the most exciting incident is when Ivan is nearly caught trying to bring part of a blade back into the camp.

One can sympathize with Ivan for he is actually innocent. He is a POW accused of being a spy for the German army. He knows that even if he managed to escape the guards' guns, he would not survive in the Siberian wilderness; thus, he must tough out his ten years in the camp.

He takes delight in simple things like getting an extra bowl of stew at lunch and a drag from a cigarette from one of his fellow inmates. It's also interesting how the zeks are more loyal to those prisoners closer in rank to themselves than the guards.

Unless you are taking a class on Stalinist Russia or have a deep interest in Russian literature, I recommend not reading this book. I don't believe that it is the best representation of great Russian literature. Solzhenitsyn's style is very base, fragmented and aggravating. It's quite apparent that writing was a second occupation; he was first a mathematician. Only read this book if you want to know how depressing Stalinist camp life was. If you want great introductory Russian literature I recommend Dostoevsky's 'Notes from Underground.' It is about the same length as this work, but the style is much more crisp and connected.

Rating:
Summary: building block for modern Russian literature
Review: a beautifully told tale of Stalinist work camps from a man who lived them. a great starting point for those interested in 20th century Russian literature and/or Solzhenitsyn. An easy one day read and a cornerstone work of one of the greatest minds in the 20th century.

Rating:
Summary: Survival in a Soviet camp
Review: This book was gripping from its very first page. You start the book with Shukov at dawn and continue with him for the rest of the day. Most of the book is caught up with descriptions of the tasks that the zeks (prisoners) had to do, the ingenious ways of keeping alive and what it took to make it over the ten or twenty five year stretches in a "special" camp.

I thought perhaps Solzhenitsyn could have explored the issue of the injustices in these camps more fully, there were only passing references to the unfair treatment that these prisoners had to go through and most of these were stated in a matter-of-fact kind of way. This left the reader feeling like an outsider watching a distant scene rather than being in amongst the prisoners; feeling their pain and their daily struggles.

The character Aloysha, a baptist interested me because of the way he handled the sufferings in prison with an uncanny cheerfulness. I would have loved to see more of a dialogue between him and Shukov to see what really made him tick. This book does not delve into any deep philosophical issues, it is more like a diary of Shukov's day; unthinking and mechanical, noting down the events that happened during the day in chronological order without much comment.

I do not mean to criticize the book, just point out my observations. All in all I found the book to be very interesting reading and I would recommend this book to you if you are interested in a historical novel about the "special" camps in Russia during the time of Stalin.

Rating:
Summary: What was your today like?
Review: There is a saying that today,the day we spent in vain, is the

day which the people,who died yesterday, desperately hoped to

see. We should be fully aware of the value of "one day" reading

this book.

This book describes the overall life in a jail, which is not

better or worse than that of other prisoners. As Ivan is the

most common name of Russia, his life in the jail is as ordinary

as his name. Those who have never been to Russia or read the

contemporary literature might say that the story is too

exagerated. However nothing is a lie of false. This is the

actual life that any Russian prisoner would have overcome at

the time.

All fight for their own life:food. Prisoners are eager to

steal others' bread or soup by instinct in order to survive.

Their goal is to eat as much as possible just to get out of the

jail alive. And that is their life at the same time. The

struggle for a piece-not a loaf-of bread is the survival fight.

It is definitely not because they hate each other or so.

Besides, although the atmosphere is always tense and

oppressed, those prisoners do keep their conscience and care

for others. Perhaps what Dostoevsky tried to tell is that under

the worst circumstances do people still have their own dignity

and humanity. However, we seem to lose them in this very

comfortable and wealthier world.

One day may be very short for ordinary people yet it is so

precious to others, such as to prisoners. While reading, I,

time to time, thought, 'how come a day is so long that it takes

a whole book to describe it?' But as soon as finishing it, I

was surprised that somebody's day could be felt so short to me.

My professor assigned homework in Russian Literature lecture;to

describe 5 or 10 minites from my day. My 5 minutes were

drastically long to write.

In this book hides human breath and dignity, even though it

merely seems to show the horrible, harsh life in jail.

Regardless how hard the conditions are, people would not lose

the dignity that Solzhenitsyn taught us from this book.

Rating:
Summary: One Day in the Live of Ivan Denisovich
Review: Its the early 1900's and your in Communist Russia. You've committed a crime and are in a prison camp for ten years. In the Soviet Union, it is extremely cold and is the surveylence is almost unberable. Any wrong move and you could be either executed or thrown into a prison camp for a long time. This is exactly what Ivan Denisovich had to deal with in the book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. In this book, Alexandre Solzhenitsyn illustrates how cruel these prison camps really were. Every day, the men that were there had to put up with long, cold winters that rarely went above 15 degrees farenheight. Working out in the cold became a normal thing, but was never a thing to get used to. Since it was the time of Communism, Russia didn't care about the situations and severity of the help needed in these camps. They simply put the men to work and fed them two very small meals a day, just enough to live and get a little energy to work with. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich show how the men put up with this everyday torture and endured it for a very large part of this life. I recomend this book to anyone interested in how Communist Russia acted toward men and women of simple crimes and to see how unjust they were toward them. there is a lot more to learn and read though before we can fully comprehend what kind of life these people lived in these prison camps.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting....
Review: I found "One Day" to be a rather fascinating book. By modern standards, this book may not measure up to what many would call a "classic", but taken in it's historical context, one can understand it's importance. This book was written and published at a time when doing so would have been extremely dangerous. In fact, Solzhenitsyn was actually exiled for it, and was lucky to receive only that punishment for it. He offers what was at the time, a rare and frightening look behind the iron curtain. This book is still important today, as it reminds us of what tyranny can and frequently does accomplish, and why we still fight against it.

On a lighter note, I found it rather interesting that this book brought back many fond memories of being in the Army. The two experiences seem to be somewhat similar, although it is difficult to make an accurate comparison without having gone through the Soviet prison camp system. It seems the biggest difference, though, is that people actually CHOOSE to be in the Army and they are well-fed and clothed while there. It was also interesting to note that most of the prisoners took a certain pride in their work, even though they were not paid for it, and they were forced to do it. This is something of a rarity in today's free society where laziness and incompetence are usually greatly encouraged and rewarded.

Rating:
Summary: Read Dostoevsky--forget Solzhenitsyn.
Review: Read "Crime & Punnishment". Read "The Brothers Karmazov". Read "Night", by Elie Wiesel if you want a better look at prison/labor camps, but for heavensake...forget Ivan Desinovich!

Rating:
Summary: One day in the life of. . . . .(snore)
Review: OK, I'm going to expose a harsh reality that seems to be going unspoken up until now. The only reason that this book is considered a classic is because it is based on a true story. This doesn't make sense. The point of writing, to me, is that you have a story to tell and you want to convey that story to readers using the typical litereary tools (description, plot, charachter development, etc). As a piece of literature this book is a failure. The charachters are flat. The plot doesn't "move" - it just kind of loops over and over in a Groundhog Day-like fashion with it's irrelevant descriptions of manual labor and prison apparel. And the descriptions were very dry - you could count the number of adjectives used in the book on one hand. Just because the prisoiners were lifeless doesn't mean the writing has to be too.

Not only did he pick the wrong story to tell, he doesn't even tell his ill-picked story very well. I keep reading reviews about how this book exposes the "horrors" of the prison camp. It's kind of funny because if you actually broke this book up into 20-page random sections and gave them to people to read and then asked each of them what the book was about based on what they read they probably wouldn't even be able to tell you that he was in a prison camp. Based on the benign descriptions of the activities that went on there, you could think he was a construction worker for all you know. I don't need the excrutiatingly boring detail of the mundane tasks he had to do. The writer was obviously trying to get some point accross by doing that. But what was that point? that the real tragedy was that these prisoners were forced to do boring work and because of this their lives had no meaning? Well, shoot, neither does mine.

The bottom line complaint about this book is that it has no emotion. Now, that would have been fine if it were actually done on purpose - if the moral of the story was I-was-in-a-prison-camp-and-it-sucked-the-life-out-of-me but it wasn't done on purpose, at least not successfully. You were in a prison camp and the best you could come up with was "My feet were really cold" and "My boots don't fit". There was no emotional or physical torture (not caused by mother nature)? We never (literally not once) found out how he felt. Using the third person perspective in this book was a major tactical error.

Alot of the readers undoubtedly are basing their opinions about this book based on Solzhenitsyn's other works (which I assume are better). This book seems like some rough draft that he wrote as a warm-up for a better story but someone with bad taste actually submitted it for publication. The book also got attention for the fact that it was banned and therefore attained acclaim for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the literature itself. Because readers are basing their opinion of this book on the sympathetic real-life story underlying the book (which is politically and historically relevant), the readers who gave this book more than a couple of stars are basing their opinion on what the book COULD have been and not on what it was.