In my continuing effort to educate myself by reading classic literature, I recently read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It was a quick and fascinating read but I am almost at a loss of how to capture it or review it. Being a good blogger, however, I will soldier on.
Perhaps a quick summary would be beneficial and possible. The book, as obvious from the title, relates the day of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov a prisoner in a Soviet slave labor camp. This Ivan Denisovich is a prisoner, or “zek”, in a Soviet slave labor camp. Shukhov has been sentenced to ten years simply because he was captured by the Germans in WW I. He escaped and rejoined the Red Army but was immediately suspected of being a spy. His denial only led to brutal beatings to the point where he signed a "confession" to save his life. In the story Shukhov has nearly served his entire sentence. The story follows him through his day - from reveille at five AM until he falls asleep that night.
What is remarkable about the story is that Shukhov remains relatively upbeat throughout despite being a prisoner in a slave labor camp as a result of a false accusation agreed to only under threat of death. The prisoners eke out a living on watery broth and bread weighed out in ounces. They face horrific weather and treachery from every angle. And yet some of the manage to survive and carry on. The force of the story comes from the "normalcy" that Shukhov manages to create in a place of living hell. He manages to retain his humanity in a place designed to dehumanize. The second to the last paragraph sums up Shukhov's perspective:
Shukhov felt pleased with life as he went to sleep. A lot of good things had happened that day. He hadn't been thrown in the hole. The gang hadn't been dragged off to Sotsgorodok [a exposed and shelter-less work site]. He'd swiped the extra gruel at dinnertime. The foreman had got a good rate for the job. He's enjoyed working on the wall. He hadn't been caught with the blade at the search point. He’d earned a bit from Tsezar that evening. And he'd bought his tobacco. The end of an unclouded day. Almost a happy one.
Solzhenitsyn doesn't end on this semi-upbeat note, however. Instead he hits you with the immensity of it all one last time:
Just one of the three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days of his sentence, from bell to bell.
The extra three years were for leap years
What Solzhenitsyn captures here is organized absurdity, a sort of organic yet cruel randomness. There is no justice or freedom or intelligence involved in the Gulag but there is a culture of sorts. There are traditions and expectations that can be used, or stretched, to navigate your way through the torturous days. There is no guarantee, you might bump into that random cruelness and find yourself in the hole. If you have the bad luck of a weak body and a severe sentence, bad luck can mean death. Obviously, if you manage to avoid this cruel fate you react with gratitude despite your surroundings. It parallels the odd sensation of joy when the soldier next to you is killed; you have survived!
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