The First Circle

Rating:
Summary: First volume of The Gulag Archipelago
Review: I recommend that you read the entire Gulag Archipelago; The First Circle is a particularly specific work, dealing with the mind-numbing and devious prison for intellectually valuable polical prisoners during Stalinist Russia. A sort of think-tank was created by falsely accusing and imprisoning brilliant people. What occurred was not the total degradation of a labor camp, but the mind-numbing passivity of those whose future is not in their own hands. The First Circle refers to Dante's First Circle of Hell; the best circle, but hell nonetheless.

Rating:
Summary: If you like to read...read this
Review: I was first introdced to Solzhenitsyn's works when I was a freshman in high school, far too many years ago in a little town. The book was the Volume 1 of The Gulag Archipelago. It was really an eye-opener for me in so many ways, given that it was the first "really serious" book that I'd read.

I believe that Solzhenitsyn is the best writer of the 20th century, or at least he's the top writer I've read so far (and I've read a lot of books). Maybe that's influenced by my early exposure, but I don't think so; I find his works just as compelling now as I did then.

The First Circle is one of his most "accessible" works (that is, you can just jump in and start reading) and probably one of his best. A very compelling story; his portraits of the various vile creatures of the Soviet government have been shown to be quite accurate, and the way the various plots intertwine and are resolved is wonderful.

The First Circle gives great insight into a culture totally foreign to most US citizens, as the book's a mixture of spy novel, guide to life in a Gulag camp, and brief introduction to Soviet society of the 1950s. A depressing place to be sure, but fascinating. Well worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: The First Circle
Review: What makes The First Circle such a great book (the best I've read by Solzhenitsyn) is how he reduces a political system and economic ideology to individual choices. It was a system built upon greed, jealousy, selfish pragmatism and fear, the vanity of Stalin, the petty rivalry between commanding officers, the desperate connivance of a prisoner who will turn against his fellow man in order to better his own lot. In other words, humanity.

The consequences were also human: the loss of the prime years of a man's life, a life without the love of a woman, a father worrying about the fate of his young daughter thousands of miles away. Solzhenitsyn does a masterful job of rendering the real world behind philosophy and ideology, the world the USSR lost sight of when they placed ends before means.

In the end, what is perhaps most frightening is that the face of evil is so banal.