Alexander Solzhenitsyn – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

This simply-told story recounts one day for a 40 something Russian man, Shukhov (Ivan Denisovich), in one of Stalin's labour camps, somewhere in northern Kazakhstan. A place described as:

“Strange! Yes, a strange sight indeed: the naked steppe, the empty
building-site, the snow gleaming in the moonlight.”

But this isn’t a story built on languid descriptions of landscape. Shukhov and his 104th team are the focus: how they fight the extreme cold, how they work together, how the guards rule every movement, and how individuals fight for every precious personal moment. These moments are sacred to Shukhov. No longer a member of the 104th, but an individual suddenly, with the rare ability to focus inwards, concentrating thoughts on something other than inspections, marching in rank, and hard labour. Shukhov finds these moments in eating. He spends his entire day negotiating, bartering, and seeking opportunities to carry out favours, all in return for extra portions of thin porridge or “skilly”.

As the skilly “went down, filling his entire body with warmth” then

“Shukhov complained about nothing: neither about the length of his stretch, nor about the length of the day … This was all he thought about now: we’ll survive. We’ll stick it out, God grant, till it’s over”.

For Shukhov there is nothing to think about outside of the immediate need to keep warm, healthy and alive. As a middle-class Western man bombarded with all the distractions and information that the 21st century can throw, cast off into a distance-less and timeless void where anything can be got and anywhere reached at speed, it is a state of mind I am in curious awe of. Oh, if one could be satisfied with the basic necessities for survival taken care of each day, instead of this perpetual longing for some thing or some place else. (I did say middle-class!)

“’Why d’you want freedom? In freedom your last grain of faith will be choked with weeds. You should rejoice that you’re in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul.’ … Shukhov gazed at the ceiling in silence. Now he didn’t know either whether he wanted freedom or not.”

Does someone really need an experience like Shukhov’s to be able to appreciate home, family and security? Of the camp Shukhov says: “That’s what everyone used to say: ‘Going home.’ We never had time to think of any other home.”

Solzhenitsyn himself spent 8 years in various camps, charged with making derogatory comments about Stalin. When he was released in 1953 he spent another 3 years in exile, eventually returning to Russia to teach, this novel appearing in the early 60s thanks in large part to Alexander Tvardovsky.

As a writer I wrestle daily with what shall I write about? Time seems to stand still and shrink all at once. Constantly I feel like I am wasting time. Personal experience seems pithy and weak. The future weighs heavy, like a distant dark cloud looming on the horizon.

“Wonder of wonders! How time flew when you were working! That was something he’d often noticed. The days rolled by in the camp – they were over before you could say ‘knife’. But the years, they never rolled by: they never moved by a second.”

Solzhenitsyn’s writing was the first to expose much of the hard facts around Stalin’s labour camps, and, to me, raises many questions about how one lives one’s life today – both internally, and in action. This novel is as vital now as it ever was.

“You can push a man this way, and you can push a man that way.”