Alexander Solzhenitsyn

One day of Ivan Denisovich

This edition is true and final.

No lifetime publications can cancel it.

At five o'clock in the morning, as always, the rise struck - with a hammer on the rail at the headquarters barracks. The intermittent ringing faintly passed through the glass, which was frozen solid, and soon died down: it was cold, and the warden was reluctant to wave his hand for long.

The ringing died down, and outside the window everything was the same as in the middle of the night, when Shukhov got up to the bucket, there was darkness and darkness, and three yellow lanterns came through the window: two in the zone, one inside the camp.

And for some reason they didn’t go to unlock the barracks, and you never heard of the orderlies picking up the barrel on sticks to carry it out.

Shukhov never missed getting up, he always got up on it - before the divorce he had an hour and a half of his own time, not official, and whoever knows camp life can always earn extra money: sew someone a mitten cover from an old lining; give the rich brigade worker dry felt boots directly on his bed, so that he doesn’t have to trample barefoot around the pile, and doesn’t have to choose; or run through the storerooms, where someone needs to be served, sweep or offer something; or go to the dining room to collect bowls from the tables and take them in piles to the dishwasher - they will also feed you, but there are a lot of hunters there, there is no end, and most importantly, if there is anything left in the bowl, you can’t resist, you will start licking the bowls. And Shukhov firmly remembered the words of his first brigadier Kuzemin - he was an old camp wolf, he had been sitting for twelve years by the year nine hundred and forty-three, and he once said to his reinforcement, brought from the front, in a bare clearing by the fire:

- Here, guys, the law is the taiga. But people live here too. In the camp, this is who is dying: who licks the bowls, who hopes at the medical unit, and who goes to knock on their godfather.

As for the godfather, of course, he turned down that. They save themselves. Only their care is on someone else’s blood.

Shukhov always got up when he got up, but today he didn’t get up. Since the evening he had been uneasy, either shivering or aching. And I didn’t get warm at night. In my sleep I felt like I was completely ill, and then I started to recover a little. I didn't want it to be morning.

But the morning came as usual.

And where can you get warm here - there is ice on the window, and on the walls along the junction with the ceiling throughout the entire barracks - a healthy barracks! - white cobweb. Frost.

Shukhov did not get up. He was lying on top of the carriage, his head covered with a blanket and pea coat, and in a padded jacket, in one sleeve turned up, with both feet stuck together. He didn’t see, but he understood everything from the sounds of what was happening in the barracks and in their brigade corner. So, heavily walking along the corridor, the orderlies carried one of the eight-bucket buckets. He is considered disabled, easy work, but come on, take it without spilling it! Here in the 75th brigade they slammed a bunch of felt boots from the dryer onto the floor. And here it is in ours (and today it was our turn to dry felt boots). The foreman and sergeant-at-arms put on their shoes in silence, and their lining creaks. The brigadier will now go to the bread slicer, and the foreman will go to the headquarters barracks, to the work crews.

And not just to the contractors, as he goes every day, - Shukhov remembered: today fate is being decided - they want to transfer their 104th brigade from the construction of workshops to the new Sotsbytgorodok facility. And that Sotsbytgorodok is a bare field, in snowy ridges, and before you do anything there, you have to dig holes, put up poles and pull the barbed wire away from yourself - so as not to run away. And then build.

There, of course, there will be nowhere to warm up for a month - not a kennel. And if you can’t light a fire, what to heat it with? Work hard conscientiously - your only salvation.

The foreman is concerned and goes to settle things. Some other brigade, sluggish, should be pushed there instead. Of course, you can’t come to an agreement empty-handed. The senior foreman had to carry half a kilo of fat. Or even a kilogram.

The test isn't a loss, shouldn't you try to cut yourself off in the medical unit and free yourself from work for a day? Well, the whole body is literally torn apart.

And one more thing - which of the guards is on duty today?

On duty - I remembered: Ivan and a half, a thin and long black-eyed sergeant. The first time you look, it’s downright scary, but they recognized him as one of the most docile on duty: he doesn’t put him in a punishment cell, or drag him to the head of the regime. So you can lie down until you go to barracks nine in the dining room.

The clapboard shook and swayed. Two stood up at once: at the top was Shukhov’s neighbor, Baptist Alyoshka, and at the bottom was Buinovsky, a former captain of the second rank, cavalry officer.

The old orderlies, having carried out both buckets, began to argue about who should go get boiling water. They scolded affectionately, like women. The electric welder from the 20th brigade barked.

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a story about a prisoner who describes one day of his life in prison, of which there are three thousand five hundred and sixty-four. A summary is below :)

The main character of the work, which takes place over the course of one day, is the peasant Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. On the second day after the start of the Great Patriotic War, he went to the front from his native village of Temgenevo, where he left behind a wife and two daughters. Shukhov also had a son, but he died.

In February, one thousand nine hundred and forty-two, on the North-Western Front, a group of soldiers, which included Ivan Denisovich, was surrounded by the enemy. It was impossible to help them; Because of hunger, the soldiers even had to eat the hooves of dead horses soaked in water. Soon Shukhov was captured by the Germans, but he and four colleagues managed to escape from there and get to their own. However, Soviet machine gunners killed two former prisoners immediately. One died from his wounds, and Ivan Denisovich was sent to the NKVD. As a result of a quick investigation, Shukhov was sent to a concentration camp - after all, every person who was captured by the Germans was considered an enemy spy.

Ivan Denisovich has been serving his sentence for nine years. For eight years he was imprisoned in Ust-Izhma, and now he is in a Siberian camp. Over the years, Shukhov grew a long beard, and his teeth became half as numerous. He is dressed in a padded jacket, over which is a peacoat belted with a string. Ivan Denisovich has quilted trousers and felt boots on his feet, and under them are two pairs of foot wraps. On the trousers, just above the knee, there is a patch on which the camp number is embroidered.

The most important task in the camp is to avoid starvation. The prisoners are fed disgusting gruel - a soup made from frozen cabbage and small pieces of fish. If you try, you can get an extra portion of such gruel or another ration of bread.

Some prisoners even receive packages. One of them was Caesar Markovich (either a Jew or a Greek) - a man of pleasant oriental appearance with a thick, black mustache. The prisoner's mustache was not shaved, since without it he would not have matched the photograph attached to the case. He once wanted to become a director, but he never managed to film anything - he was imprisoned. Caesar Markovich lives with memories and behaves like a cultured person. He talks about a “political idea” as a justification for tyranny, and sometimes publicly scolds Stalin, calling him “the mustachioed old man.” Shukhov sees that in penal servitude there is a freer atmosphere than in Ust-Izhma. You can talk about anything without fear that your sentence will be increased. Caesar Markovich, being a practical person, managed to adapt to hard labor: he knows how to “put it in the mouth of whoever needs it” from the parcels sent to him. Thanks to this, he works as an assistant standardizer, which was quite an easy task. Caesar Markovich is not greedy and shares food and tobacco from parcels with many (especially with those who helped him in some way).

Ivan Denisovich still understands that Tsezar Markovich does not yet understand anything about camp procedures. Before the "shmon" he does not have time to take the parcel to the storage room. The cunning Shukhov managed to save the goods sent to Caesar, and he did not remain in his debt.

Most often, Caesar Markovich shared supplies with his neighbor “on the bedside table” Kavtorang, a sea captain of the second rank Buinovsky. He sailed around Europe and along the Northern Sea Route. Once Buinovsky, as a communications captain, even accompanied an English admiral. He was impressed by his high professionalism and after the war sent him a souvenir. Because of this parcel, the NKVD decided that Buinovsky was an English spy. Kavtorang has been in the camp not long ago and has not yet lost faith in justice. Despite his habit of commanding people, Kavtorang does not shy away from camp work, for which he enjoys the respect of all prisoners.

There is also someone in the camp whom no one respects. This is the former office boss Fetyukov. He doesn't know how to do anything at all and can only carry a stretcher. Fetyukov does not receive any help from home: his wife left him, after which she immediately married someone else. The former boss is used to eating plenty and therefore often begs. This man has long lost his self-esteem. He is constantly offended, and sometimes even beaten. Fetyukov is not able to fight back: “he will wipe himself off, cry and go.” Shukhov believes that it is impossible for people like Fetyukov to survive in a camp where they need to be able to position themselves correctly. Preserving one's own dignity is necessary only because without it a person loses the will to live and is unlikely to be able to survive until the end of his sentence.

Ivan Denisovich himself does not receive parcels from home, because people in his native village are already starving. He diligently stretches out his rations throughout the day so as not to feel hungry. Shukhov also does not shy away from the opportunity to “cut” an extra piece from his superiors.

On the day described in the story, the prisoners are working on the construction of a house. Shukhov does not shy away from work. His foreman, the dispossessed Andrei Prokofievich Tyurin, at the end of the day writes out a “percentage” - an extra bread ration. After getting up, work helps prisoners not to live in painful anticipation of lights out, but to fill the day with some meaning. The joy brought by physical labor especially supports Ivan Denisovich. He is considered the best master in his team. Shukhov intelligently distributes his strength, which helps him not to overexert himself and work effectively throughout the day. Ivan Denisovich works with passion. He is glad that he managed to hide a fragment of a saw, from which he can make a small knife. With the help of such a homemade knife it is easy to earn money for bread and tobacco. However, guards regularly search prisoners. The knife can be taken away during a “shmon”; This fact gives the matter a kind of excitement.

One of the prisoners is a sectarian Alyosha, who was imprisoned for his faith. Alyosha the Baptist copied half of the Gospel into a notebook and made a hiding place for it in a crack in the wall. Aleshino's treasure has never been discovered during a search. In the camp he did not lose faith. Alyosha tells everyone that we need to pray so that the Lord will remove the evil scum from our hearts. In penal servitude, neither religion, nor art, nor politics are forgotten: prisoners worry not only about their daily bread.

Before going to bed, Shukhov sums up the results of the day: he was not put in a punishment cell, he was not sent to work on the construction of Sotsgorodok (in a frosty field), he hid a piece of saw and did not get caught during the "shmona", during lunch he received an extra portion of porridge ("mowed"), bought tobacco... This is what an almost happy day in the camp looks like.

And Ivan Denisovich has three thousand five hundred and sixty-four such days.

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (1959) is the first work of A. Solzhenitsyn to see the light. It was this story, published in more than a hundred thousand copies in the 11th issue of the New World magazine in 1962, that brought the author not only all-Union, but essentially world-wide fame. In the magazine version, “One Day...” had the genre designation “story.” In the book “A Calf Butted an Oak Tree” (1967-1975), Solzhenitsyn said that the editors of Novy Mir suggested calling this work a story (“for the sake of it”). Later, the writer expressed regret that he succumbed to external pressure: “I shouldn’t have given in. In our country, the boundaries between genres are closing and forms are being devalued. “Ivan Denisovich” is, of course, a story, albeit a big, loaded one.”

The significance of A. Solzhenitsyn’s work is not only that it opened the previously forbidden topic of repression and set a new level of artistic truth, but also that in many respects (from the point of view of genre originality, narrative and spatio-temporal organization, vocabulary, poetic syntax, rhythm, richness of the text with symbolism, etc.) was deeply innovative."

“THE STRONGEST IMPRESSION OF THE LAST DAYS - A. RYAZANSKY’S MANUSCRIPT”

The story's publication history was complex. After Khrushchev’s speech at the XXII Congress of the CPSU, a typewritten copy of the story on November 10, 1961 was transferred by Solzhenitsyn through Raisa Orlova, the wife of Lev Kopelev’s sharashka cellmate, to the prose department of the “New World”, Anna Samoilovna Berzer. The author was not indicated on the manuscript; at Kopelev’s suggestion, Berzer wrote “A. Ryazansky" (at the author’s place of residence). On December 8, Berzer invited the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir, Alexander Tvardovsky, to review the manuscript. Knowing the tastes of her editor, she said: “Camp through the eyes of a man, a very popular thing.” On the night of December 8–9, Tvardovsky read and reread the story. On December 12, he wrote in his workbook: “The strongest impression of the last days is the manuscript of A. Ryazansky (Solzhenitsyn) ...”

On December 9, Kopelev sent a telegram to Solzhenitsyn: “Alexander Trifonovich is delighted...”. On December 11, Tvardovsky asked Solzhenitsyn by telegram to urgently come to the editorial office of Novy Mir. On December 12, Solzhenitsyn arrived in Moscow and met with Tvardovsky and his deputies Kondratovich, Zaks, and Dementyev at the editorial office of Novy Mir. Kopelev was also present at the meeting. They decided to call the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”

But Tvardovsky’s desire to publish this thing was not enough. As an experienced Soviet editor, he understood perfectly well that it would not be published without the permission of the supreme power. In December 1961, Tvardovsky gave the manuscript of “Ivan Denisovich” to Chukovsky, Marshak, Fedin, Paustovsky, and Ehrenburg to read. At Tvardovsky's request, they wrote their written reviews of the story. Chukovsky called his review “Literary Miracle.” On August 6, 1962, Tvardovsky handed over the letter and manuscript of “Ivan Denisovich” to Khrushchev’s assistant Vladimir Lebedev. In September, Lebedev began reading the story to Khrushchev during his leisure hours. Khrushchev liked the story, and he ordered that 23 copies of “Ivan Denisovich” be provided to the CPSU Central Committee for leading figures of the CPSU. On September 15, Lebedev told Tvardovsky that Khrushchev had approved the story. On October 12, 1962, under pressure from Khrushchev, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee decided to publish the story, and on October 20, Khrushchev announced this decision of the Presidium to Tvardovsky. Later, in his memoir “A Calf Butted an Oak Tree,” Solzhenitsyn admitted that without the participation of Tvardovsky and Khrushchev, the book “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” would not have been published in the USSR. And the fact that it was finally published was another “literary miracle.”

"Shch-854. ONE DAY OF ONE PRISONER"

In 1950, on one long winter camp day, I was carrying a stretcher with my partner and thought: how to describe our entire camp life? In fact, it is enough to describe just one day in detail, in the smallest detail, moreover, the day of the simplest worker, and our whole life will be reflected here. And there is no need to intensify any horrors, it is not necessary for this to be some kind of special day, but an ordinary one, this is the very day from which years are formed. I thought like this, and this idea remained in my mind, I didn’t touch it for nine years, and only in 1959, nine years later, I sat down and wrote it. I didn’t write it for long, only about forty days, less than a month and a half. It always turns out like this if you write from a dense life, the way of life of which you know too much, and not only that you don’t have to guess at something, try to understand something, but you only fight off unnecessary material, just so that the unnecessary does not creep in , but to accommodate the most necessary things. Yes, Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky suggested this title, the current title, his own. I had Shch-854. One day for one prisoner."

From a radio interview with Alexander SolzhenitsynBBCto the 20th anniversary of the release of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”

AKHMATOV ABOUT “IVAN DENISOVITCH” AND SOLZHENITSYN

“He’s not afraid of fame. He probably doesn’t know how scary it is and what it entails.”

“DEAR IVAN DENISOVICH...!” (LETTERS FROM READERS)

“Dear comrade Solzhenitsyn!<…>I read your story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and thank you from the bottom of my heart for Mother Truth.<…>I work in a mine. I drive an electric locomotive with trolleys of coking coal. Our coal has a thousand-degree heat. Let this warmth, through my respect, warm you.”

“Dear comrade A. Solzhenitsyn (unfortunately, I don’t know his name and patronymic). From distant Chukotka, accept warm congratulations on your first generally recognized literary success - the publication of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” I read it with extraordinary interest. I admired the originality of the language, the deep, relief, truthful depiction of all the details of camp life. Your story cleanses our souls and consciences for all the lawlessness and tyranny that was committed during the years of the personality cult.<…>Who am I? Was at the front from battery commander to PNSh<помощника начальника штаба.>artillery regiment Due to injury in the fall of 1943, he did not return to the front. After the war - at party and Soviet work...”

“Dear Alexander Isaevich! I just read your Story (I write with a capital T). Please forgive me for the incoherence of the letter, I am not a writer and, probably, not even a very literate person, and your Tale so excited me and awakened so many sad memories that I have no time to choose the style and syllable of the letter. You described one day of one prisoner, Ivan Denisovich, it is clear that this is the day of thousands and hundreds of thousands of the same prisoners, and this day is not so bad. Ivan Denisovich, summing up the results of the day, is, in any case, pleased. And these are the frosty days when, on duty, the orderlies take the dead out of the barracks and put them in a stack (but there were also those who did not bring the dead right away, but received rations for several days), and we, the unfortunate prisoners, 58- I, shrouded in all sorts of conceivable and unimaginable rags, stood in formation of five, waiting to be taken out of the zone, and the accordion player, providing EHF events<культурно-воспитательной части.>, plays “Katyusha”. The workers’ shouts: “I’ll put them in tin cans, and you’ll go to work,” etc., etc., etc. Then 7-8 km into the forest, the harvesting rate is 5 cubic meters...”

"Despite all the horror of this ordinary day<…>it does not contain even one percent of those terrible, inhuman crimes that I saw after staying in the camps for more than 10 years. I witnessed when 3,000 “organized forces” (as the prisoners were called) arrived at the mine in the fall, and by spring, i.e. after 3-4 months, 200 people remained alive. Shukhov slept on a clapboard, on a mattress, albeit stuffed with sawdust, and we slept on swamp hummocks, in the rain. And when they pulled up the leaky tents, they made their own bunks out of rough poles, laid them with pine branches, and so, damp, wearing everything they wore to work, they went to bed. In the morning, the neighbor on the left or right refused the “Stalinist rations” forever...”

“Dear... (I almost wrote: Ivan Denisovich; unfortunately, I don’t know your first and patronymic name) dear writer Solzhenitsyn! I am writing to you because I cannot resist writing. Today I read your story in a magazine and was shocked. Moreover, I'm happy. I am happy that such an amazing thing has been written and published. She's irresistible. It confirms with great force the great truth about the incompatibility of art and lies. After the appearance of such a story, in my opinion, any writer will be ashamed to pour pink water. And not a single scoundrel can whitewash the indefensible. I am convinced that millions of readers will read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich with a feeling of deepest gratitude to the author.”

Solzhenitsyn wrote the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1959. The work was first published in 1962 in the magazine “New World”. The story brought Solzhenitsyn worldwide fame and, according to researchers, influenced not only literature, but also the history of the USSR. The original author's title of the work is the story “Shch-854” (the serial number of the main character Shukhov in the correctional camp).

Main characters

Shukhov Ivan Denisovich- a prisoner of a forced labor camp, a bricklayer, his wife and two daughters are waiting for him “in the wild.”

Caesar- a prisoner, “either he is Greek, or a Jew, or a gypsy,” before the camps “he made films for cinema.”

Other heroes

Tyurin Andrey Prokofievich- Brigadier of the 104th Prison Brigade. He was “dismissed from the ranks” of the army and ended up in a camp for being the son of a “kulak”. Shukhov knew him from the camp in Ust-Izhma.

Kildigs Ian– a prisoner who was given 25 years; Latvian, good carpenter.

Fetyukov- “jackal”, prisoner.

Alyoshka- prisoner, Baptist.

Gopchik- a prisoner, cunning, but harmless boy.

“At five o’clock in the morning, as always, the rise struck - with a hammer on the rail at the headquarters barracks.” Shukhov never woke up, but today he was “chilling” and “breaking.” Due to the fact that the man did not get up for a long time, he was taken to the commandant’s office. Shukhov was threatened with a punishment cell, but he was punished only by washing the floors.

For breakfast in the camp there was balanda (liquid stew) of fish and black cabbage and porridge from magara. The prisoners slowly ate the fish, spat the bones onto the table, and then swept them onto the floor.

After breakfast, Shukhov went into the medical unit. A young paramedic, who was actually a former student of the literary institute, but under the patronage of a doctor ended up in the medical unit, gave the man a thermometer. Showed 37.2. The paramedic suggested that Shukhov “stay at his own risk” to wait for the doctor, but still advised him to go to work.

Shukhov went into the barracks for rations: bread and sugar. The man divided the bread into two parts. I hid one under my padded jacket, and the second in the mattress. Baptist Alyoshka read the Gospel right there. The guy “so deftly stuffs this little book into a crack in the wall - they haven’t found it on a single search yet.”

The brigade went outside. Fetyukov tried to get Caesar to “sip” a cigarette, but Caesar was more willing to share with Shukhov. During the “shmona”, prisoners were forced to unbutton their clothes: they checked whether anyone had hidden a knife, food, or letters. People were frozen: “the cold has gotten under your shirt, now you can’t get rid of it.” The column of prisoners moved. “Due to the fact that he had breakfast without rations and ate everything cold, Shukhov felt unfed today.”

“A new year began, the fifty-first, and in it Shukhov had the right to two letters.” “Shukhov left the house on the twenty-third of June forty-one. On Sunday, people from Polomnia came from mass and said: war.” Shukhov's family was waiting for him at home. His wife hoped that upon returning home her husband would start a profitable business and build a new house.

Shukhov and Kildigs were the first foremen in the brigade. They were sent to insulate the machine room and lay the walls with cinder blocks at the thermal power plant.

One of the prisoners, Gopchik, reminded Ivan Denisovich of his late son. Gopchik was imprisoned “for carrying milk to the Bendera people in the forest.”

Ivan Denisovich has almost served his sentence. In February 1942, “in the North-West, their entire army was surrounded, and nothing was thrown from the planes for them to eat, and there were no planes. They went so far as to cut off the hooves of dead horses.” Shukhov was captured, but soon escaped. However, “their own people,” having learned about the captivity, decided that Shukhov and other soldiers were “fascist agents.” It was believed that he was imprisoned “for treason”: he surrendered to German captivity, and then returned “because he was carrying out a task for German intelligence. What kind of task - neither Shukhov himself nor the investigator could come up with.”

Lunch break. The workers were not given extra food, the “sixes” got a lot, and the cook took away the good food. For lunch there was oatmeal porridge. It was believed that this was the “best porridge” and Shukhov even managed to deceive the cook and take two servings for himself. On the way to the construction site, Ivan Denisovich picked up a piece of a steel hacksaw.

The 104th brigade was “like a big family.” Work began to boil again: they were laying cinder blocks on the second floor of the thermal power plant. They worked until sunset. The foreman, jokingly, noted Shukhov’s good work: “Well, how can we let you go free? Without you, the prison will cry!”

The prisoners returned to the camp. The men were harassed again, checking to see if they had taken anything from the construction site. Suddenly, Shukhov felt in his pocket a piece of a hacksaw, which he had already forgotten about. It could be used to make a shoe knife and exchange it for food. Shukhov hid the hacksaw in his mitten and miraculously passed the test.

Shukhov took Caesar's place in line to receive the parcel. Ivan Denisovich himself did not receive the parcels: he asked his wife not to take them away from the children. In gratitude, Caesar gave Shukhov his dinner. In the dining room they served gruel again. Sipping the hot liquid, the man felt good: “here it is, the short moment for which the prisoner lives!”

Shukhov earned money “from private work” - he sewed slippers for someone, sewed a quilted jacket for someone. With the money he earned, he could buy tobacco and other necessary things. When Ivan Denisovich returned to his barracks, Caesar was already “humming over the parcel” and also gave Shukhov his ration of bread.

Caesar asked Shukhov for a knife and “got into debt to Shukhov again.” The check has begun. Ivan Denisovich, realizing that Caesar’s parcel could be stolen during the check, told him to pretend to be sick and go out last, while Shukhov would try to be the very first to run in after the check and look after the food. In gratitude, Caesar gave him “two biscuits, two lumps of sugar and one round slice of sausage.”

We talked with Alyosha about God. The guy said that you need to pray and be glad that you are in prison: “here you have time to think about your soul.” “Shukhov silently looked at the ceiling. He himself didn’t know whether he wanted it or not.”

“Shukhov fell asleep, completely satisfied.” “They didn’t put him in a punishment cell, they didn’t send the brigade to Sotsgorodok, he made porridge at lunch, the foreman closed the interest well, Shukhov laid the wall cheerfully, he didn’t get caught with a hacksaw on a search, he worked in the evening at Caesar’s and bought tobacco. And I didn’t get sick, I got over it.”

“The day passed, unclouded, almost happy.

There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his period from bell to bell.

Due to leap years, three extra days were added...”

Conclusion

In the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Alexander Solzhenitsyn depicted the life of people who ended up in Gulag forced labor camps. The central theme of the work, according to Tvardovsky, is the victory of the human spirit over camp violence. Despite the fact that the camp was actually created to destroy the personality of the prisoners, Shukhov, like many others, manages to constantly wage an internal struggle, to remain human even in such difficult circumstances.

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August 3, 2013 is the fifth anniversary of the death of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Russian writer, publicist, dissident and Nobel laureate. Russian writer, public figure, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk, into a Cossack family. The father, Isaac Semenovich, died hunting six months before the birth of his son. Mother - Taisiya Zakharovna Shcherbak - from the family of a wealthy landowner. In 1941, Alexander Solzhenitsyn graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University (enrolled in 1936).
In October 1941 he was drafted into the army. Awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree and the Red Star. For criticizing the actions of J.V. Stalin in personal letters to his childhood friend Nikolai Vitkevich, Captain Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was arrested and sentenced to 8 years in forced labor camps. In 1962, in the magazine "New World", with the special permission of N.S. Khrushchev, the first story of Alexander Solzhenitsyn was published - "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (the story "Shch-854" was redone at the request of the editors).
In November 1969, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Writers' Union. In 1970, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but refused to travel to Stockholm for the award ceremony, fearing that the authorities would not allow him back to the USSR. In 1974, after the publication of the book “The Gulag Archipelago” in Paris (in the USSR, one of the manuscripts was seized by the KGB in September 1973, and in December 1973 it was published in Paris), the dissident writer was arrested. On May 27, 1994, the writer returned to Russia, where he lived until his death in 2008.

Several unexpected facts from the life of the writer.

1. Solzhenitsyn entered literature under the erroneous patronymic “Isaevich”. Alexander Solzhenitsyn's real middle name is Isaakievich. The writer's father, Russian peasant Isaac Solzhenitsyn, died hunting six months before the birth of his son. The mistake crept in when the future Nobel laureate was receiving his passport.
2. In elementary school, Sasha Solzhenitsyn was laughed at for wearing a cross and going to church.
3. Solzhenitsyn did not want to make literature his main specialty and therefore entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov State University. At the university he studied with excellent marks and received a Stalinist scholarship.
4. Solzhenitsyn was also attracted to the theatrical environment, so much so that in the summer of 1938 he went to take exams at the Moscow theater studio of Yu. A. Zavadsky, but failed.

5. In 1945, Solzhenitsyn was sent to a correctional camp because, while at the front, he wrote letters to friends in which he called Stalin a “godfather” who distorted “Leninist norms.”
6. In the camp, Solzhenitsyn fell ill with cancer. He was diagnosed with advanced seminoma, a malignant tumor of the gonads. The writer underwent radiation therapy, but he did not feel better. Doctors predicted three weeks to live, but Solzhenitsyn was healed. In the early 1970s, he had three sons.
7. While still at university, Solzhenitsyn began writing poetry. A collection of poetry called “Prussian Nights” was published in 1974 by the emigrant publishing house YMCA-press. 8. While in prison, Solzhenitsyn developed a method of memorizing texts using rosary beads. On one of the transfers, he saw Lithuanian Catholics making rosaries from soaked bread, colored black, red and white with burnt rubber, tooth powder or streptocide. Fingering the knuckles of his rosary, Solzhenitsyn repeated poems and passages of prose. This made memorization go faster.
9. Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky, who put a lot of effort into publishing Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” subsequently became disillusioned with Solzhenitsyn and spoke extremely negatively about his work “Cancer Ward.” Tvardovsky said to Solzhenitsyn to his face: “You have nothing sacred. Your bitterness is already harming your skill.” Mikhail Sholokhov also did not sympathize with the Nobel laureate, calling Solzhenitsyn’s work “morbid shamelessness.”
10. In 1974, for leaving the “GULAG Archipelago” abroad, Solzhenitsyn was accused of treason and expelled from the USSR. Sixteen years later he was restored to Soviet citizenship and awarded the State Prize of the RSFSR for the same “GULAG Archipelago”. A recording of Solzhenitsyn’s first interview after his expulsion has been preserved:

11. In 1998, he was awarded the highest order of Russia, but refused it with the wording: “I cannot accept the award from the supreme power that brought Russia to its current disastrous state.”
12. "Polyphonic novel" is Solzhenitsyn's favorite literary form. This is the name of a novel with exact signs of time and place of action, in which there is no main character. The most important character is the one who is caught up in the story in this chapter. Solzhenitsyn's favorite technique is the technique of “montage” of a traditional story with documentary materials.
13. In the Tagansky district of Moscow there is Alexander Solzhenitsyn Street. Until 2008, the street was called Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya, but was renamed. In order to do this, the law had to be changed to prohibit naming streets after a real person until ten years after that person's death.

Audiobook A. Solzhenitsyn "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"

Observer. Topic: A. Solzhenitsyn's story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". In the studio: A. Filippenko - actor, People's Artist of Russia; L. Saraskina - critic, literary critic; - B. Lyubimov - rector of the Higher Theater School named after M. S. Shchepkina.

Several quotes from A.I. Solzhenitsyn

Merciful to men, the war took them away. And she left the women to worry about it. ("Cancer Ward")

If you don't know how to use a minute, you will waste an hour, a day, and your whole life.

What is the most expensive thing in the world? It turns out: to realize that you are not participating in injustices. They are stronger than you, they were and will be, but let them not be through you. (“In the first circle”)

Still, you exist, Creator, in heaven. You endure for a long time, but you hit hard.

No matter how much we laugh at miracles, while we are strong, healthy and prosperous, but if life is so wedged, so flattened that only a miracle can save us, we believe in this only, exceptional miracle! ("Cancer Ward")

He is a wise man who is satisfied with little.

Work is like a stick, there are two ends to it: if you do it for people, give it quality, if you do it for the boss, give it show. ("One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich")

Art is not what, but how.

When the eyes incessantly and incessantly look into each other, a completely new quality appears: you will see something that does not open when sliding quickly. The eyes seem to lose their protective colored shell, and the whole truth is splashed out without words, they cannot hold it.

...one fool will ask so many questions that a hundred smart people will not be able to answer.

But humanity is valuable, after all, not for its looming quantity, but for its maturing quality.

There are two mysteries in the world: how I was born - I don’t remember; how I will die - I don’t know. ("Matrenin's Dvor")
Don’t be afraid of the bullet that whistles, if you hear it, it means it’s no longer hitting you. You won't hear the one bullet that will kill you.

There are many smart things in the world, but few good ones