One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

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Summary: One day can change your life
Review: One day...is that all it was? Even reading the novel, you feel the exact sameness of the days, how they all blend together in a Soviet workcamp, and how it had to be difficult to keep track of how many days have passed.

This book had a profound impact on me. These types of books make me look at myself a little differently. They make me wonder just how I define what's important in my life, and they make me awe at how easy it would be to redefine "important." For Ivan, what's important is an extra bowl of food, dry gloves, and a little tobacco. But we know, when we read this, that it wasn't what was always important--once upon a time, he had a life.
Simply by becoming a prisoner of war, he's become an enemy of the State; and a prisoner of a much larger war (Stalin's war on his people).

This book is about more than Stalin and more than a workcamp. It's about much more than a day in the life of a single prisoner. It's about humanity, about questioning who we are and what it would take to make us radically different, and yes, about communism and another world.

Read it yourself--and find out.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful, one of my favorite books
Review: I had to read "Day in the Life" over ten years ago for a russian history class. It instantly became one of my favorites. For a taste of social history in Soviet Russia, the book is unparalleled. Aside from that, the book doubles as an insightful devotional. Yes, Ivan had a horrible experience, but he lived every day to its fullest and was thankful for it.
In answer to some other reviews, yes, it is slow at times, but it is @160 pages about one day! If you're willing to be patient the book is an incredible experience.

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Summary: Humbling...
Review: Fellow reviewers on this site have spoken at length about the accuracy and historical relevance of the portrayal of the Soviet Gulag system in _One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich_. They have detailed the harsh conditions, the complex mechanics of survival in the Gulag, the terror of Stalin's government, and the 'harrowing' experiences of the zeks - the slang term for the Soviet Gulag prisoner. I concur with all of these observations, but I would like to provide the potential reader with a view from another angle.

_One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich_ is uplifting. It is a story of the transcendent quality of the human will that allows one not only to survive, but to _live_ in the most adverse of situations. The protagonist, Shukhov, shows little fear, little pain. Instead he shows that a slave laborer can retain enough dignity to show pride in his workmanship, compassion for his fellows, and a drive to carry on.

Throughout the story Shukhov is creating. He sews, builds a wall, fashions illicit tools. And though these things help ensure his survival, his ongoing occupation in these activities and his investment of himself in them shows what a basic part of humans the creative impulse is. For Shukhov, creating does not save his life, it is his life.

In this world, there are people whose words are clear and inspiring, tempered with insight gained through adversity - the kind of adversity so severe that no person would choose to place themselves amongst it. Imprisonment, danger, fear of death. Solzhenitsyn is one of these; the wisdom he offers to us has already been bought and paid for. We others are fortunate enough to be lent what these people have to offer - those who have had no choice but to be there, and have lived to write about it. And if ever we find ourselves in a similar kind of adversity, we can remember what they have taught us, and know that adversity can be endured.

Some say that life is suffering. The story of the zek shows me in suffering, there can be life. The story reminded me of how comfortable my life is and how trivial my concerns can be. The author's style and the skill of the translation (I refer to the H.T. Willetts translation, ISBN 0374521956) make this book accessible to everyone. This is fortunate, because everyone can benefit from the message to be found in _One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich_.

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Summary: Harrowing Tale of Stalin-Age Work Camps
Review: Stalin gets off easy in the annals of history for his butchery, probably because he fought with the U.S. against Hitler. But this book will make people think a little differently. Stalin was a man who killed nearly 100 million of his own people, ostensibly in the name of security, but the real reason lies in paranoia and power-hunger. This is a tragic story by a man who experienced the same thing. Solzhenitsyn spent time in a Soviet labor camp because he made a derogatory comment about Stalin. But Ivan Denisovich Shukhov's crime is even less. He is captured by Germans in World War II but escapes to Russian lines. Instead of being decorated, he is caught in one of Stalin's witch hunts and is labeled a German spy. He confesses to a crime he did not commit, and is given 10 years hard labor. One Day chronicles his life in the camp. It is a story you will not soon forget. This short volume tells of the back-breaking work, the cruel injustices, and ultimately denounces Stalin. If the book had been published ten years earlier Solzhenitsyn would most likely have been killed. But Krushchev allowed it to be published. Along with Doctor Zhivago it stands as one of the greatest pieces of Soviet Literature ever written, still as powerful today as it was when published in 1962.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: Stalin held the Soviet Union in a grip of terror from 1941 until he died (or, some are now saying, was murdered) in 1953. Among the atrocities that were always suspected were the existence of brutal Siberian prisons. In 1963, Alexander Solzhenitzyn's novel, ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH, was published in America and around the world, revealing the realities of these experiences.

As much as the book makes an important statement of the political and social conditions of the era, it is also a wonderful work of literature. In a direct, spare style, the author goes through the minutiae of daily life from the perspective of one man, the title character who is mostly called Shukhov in the book. Like the other prisoners, Shukhov is not in for crime as we define it in America; his crime was to have been unlucky enough during World War II to be taken as a POW. Another prisoner's crime was to have received a small token of appreciation after the war from a British soldier. The brutalities they experience in their prison are not those commonly associated with contemporary American incarceration. Insufficient clothing, insufficient food and insufficient bedding in a remote arctic setting are just the beginning. They have nothing else. Work on building a "community" is only called off if the temperature goes lower than 42 degrees below zero. The men are given insufficient tools and supplies but are expected under threat to complete the building process in record time. On the one hand, the author writes, your worst enemy is the man next to you because you are both scrambling for the same meager scraps. At the same time, though, the dynamics of the system require that you give your allegiance to the gang. Many of the boss jobs are given to prisoners which yields another revelation about Stalin's world: the wall between prisoner and paid staff was very thin. Another: in the brief flashbacks of life outside the prison, there are struggles and inadequacies as well, no one has it easy. And another: the prisoners have one advantage that no one else in the USSR has, the freedom to communicate candidly without threat; what else can be done to those already living the life of punishment? At the end of the day, Shukhov is thrilled: he has caged a few extra scraps of food during the day and did nothing that would cause him to be thrown into solitary confinement of which he is most afraid.

My chief test of fiction is, does the author create an airtight world, using it to explicate universal truths of the human condition? ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH succeeds brilliantly. It is very readable, much like THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, and while it profiles a terrible life, it also emits a spirituality that arises from the specter of men who find something to be grateful for at the end of the day, even if it is an extra crust of stale bread or the fact that in the last 24 hours, they did nothing, however innocently, however not their own fault, that would get them sent to solitary confinement.

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Summary: Survival Story
Review: This book is possibly a more important historical document than a work of literature, especially when read in translation. This is the story of a single, ordinary day in the life of a labor camp prisoner in Stalin's Russia. The narrative is involving as it has that quality of documenting detail on which the character's survival depends, the way Dafoe documented Crusoe's life. You don't have to know very much about Russia or history to read this book. It is an account of simple human survival in the harshest and most dehumanizing conditions. Its honest, raw language and first-hand source places it into the tradition of modern realism. Ivan Denisovich is not out to teach us something about human resilience, only the desire to live. He is not out to make a profound political statement, since conclusions can be easily made by the reader. The conditions of life Solzhenitsyn depicts are so injust and harrowing that the reader has little choice but to denounce the regime which enacted such terror. In the end, this is a story of the simplest instinct of survival under the most artifical conditions of bondage.

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Summary: Hate speech
Review: Since I've got a professor who advocates reading more Karl Marx, I will bend to the winds of pro-Communist Political Correctness on the College Campus and label this as Anti-Communist Hate Speech. Please have the Zampolit denounce this crap as reactionary Capitalist Running Dog doo-doo! Thank you, Tovarich!

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Summary: Stimulus to a Searching, Introspective Analysis
Review: "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is indeed a powerful book. Were it merely the grim testimonial to life in the Soviet Gulags or a witness to infringed liberties, its force would be staggering. Were it a testimony to the indomitableness of human nature, it would be crushing. As it is, it shatters our perception of man and ourselves as no other book, save Anne Franke`s diary and the testemony of Elie Wiesl, could ever have done.

However, it is more than all the above. "One Day" is actually a searching look at human nature. The biting wind, jagged wire, frigid climate, watery soup, and the warmth provided by an extra pair of mittens or an hour of hard physical labor all find matches in the colorful crowd of characters that parades through this narrative - from the prison guards to the prisoners themselves to the prison director to the turncoat prisoners who sold their integrity for the favor of their oppressors.

This is a book to be read, first of all, for its historical value - a tribute to those who were imprisoned but whose voices were never heard, and a silent plea to commit all our forces to the proposition that such vileness will never reach our liberty-loving shores. No less importantly, this is a book that should prompt us to turn our eyes inward and question ourselves whether, in our own way, we are capable of committing the same atrocities against our fellow man, and whether, if subjected to the same suffering, we would have the strength of character to find as much comfort in a bowl of soup as we do now in the transient, unfounded knowledge that such inhumanity will not touch us.

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Summary: One Day in the Life of Parenting
Review: We read to our teenage sons almost every night. We are currently reading "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch". Our sons (age 14 & 16) have been captivated by Solzhenitsyn's gritty description of Soviet penal camplife. From Shukhov's tough survival skills to Alyoshka's Christ-like prayerfulness in the midst of suffering, "One Day in the Life" offers readers a marvelous cross-section of humanity in the face of tyranny. One note for read-aloud parents: the book is spotted with expletives which are true to the setting and characters but may present difficulties to parents reading aloud to teens. The book doesn't lose a thing to simply excise these from the text as you read.

Parents: for a book on parenting skills and family life spirituality, take a look into "The Family Cloister: Benedictine Wisdom for the Home", by David Robinson (New York: Crossroad, 2000).

Rating:
Summary: Life in a gulag, on one fine day
Review: I read this book on the recommendation of a friend, who said he literally shivered through the entire book. So did I.

This is Solzhenitsyn's tribute to the millions of people lost inside the Gulag Archipelago. Unlike the mammoth Archipelago, which documents the evil prison camp system of the Soviets, this is an intimate story of just one man, Ivan Denisovitch, who is sent to the impossibly harsh camp because he returned as a prisoner-of-war and was thus by definition, a traitor.

The book takes place over one day in Ivan's life in the Gulag. He schemes for an extra ration of bread, he survives an inspection, he grasps the crumbs of existence that literally are the difference between life and death. At the end of this day, you feel as cold as the sub-zero Siberian air. This book is utterly brilliant and, though depressing, heroic. Ivan never sacrifices his humanity for a moment.

There was an actual biography (now out of print) by Victor Herman called Coming out of the Ice. He was an American caught in the Stalin purges and imprisoned in a Siberian gulag. He survived the deadly games of partial cannabalism and lived on rats he trapped. He eventually got out and was able to document his experience. It compares exactly to Ivan Denisovitch. (By the way, where did the gulags go after the fall of the USSR?)